I guess the start to update was the first cross county schooling! I was meant to be having a lesson but Warren rang me and asked if I wanted to go to Larkhill instead. This was music to my ears - was insanely trying to find time to go..So we went.
Mum managed to go to the wrong field and got stuck so we hijacked a passing tractor and I promply lost my phone..Lorry was towed out and phone was found so that was resolved but I did wonder if the third thing to go wrong would be me face planting the water...
Luckily nothing happened and Squirrel was superb. I recieved some excellent cristism (including "If you warmed up round me like that at a competition I'd have your guts for garters" -blush-) but within three jumps Warren said Squirrel would easily go intermiediate so I was ecstatic and my mum almost fainted. He was a little wobbley at some of the skinnies and I learnt that if he drifts left, instead of pulling the right rein I just need to block the left shoulder to keep him straight which results in a straighter line. He didn't run out or look at anything really.
See below the excellent example of the drifting..
The next day..combined training. Unfortunately the photographer was working so no pictures. May be a good thing as I rode like an idiot! Squirrel was superb. We went to Sparsholt and entered the BE106 and 100cm class. I asked for a late time as had a couple of horses to ride in the morning and ended up having a dressage time of 15min before the end of the SJ, so we decided to jump first.
I couldn't pull myself together, I think I was very much still in cross country mode. Squirrel saved my life and jumped a lovely clear (single handedly!) round a fairly tight course.
Again the dressage didn't go great. The first half of the test was nice and the marks reflected this, but towards the end of the first canter it went a bit downhill as I didn't balance him well round the square turn and he changed legs then almost fell on his nose in a bit of a muddle, and my final halt couldn't of been more off the centre line if I tried. We scored 66% or 34 in an eventing mindset which I thought was fair. The nice work at the beginning earnt their fair share of 7s and 8s and then a few 55s for the mistakes. We ended up 5th with joint 1st on 70% and joint 3rd on 66.5% so not miles off.
We had a nice quiet weekend last week, then decided to pop to Boomerang for another go cross country on Thursday. I decided I wanted to jump "course style" and he was SUPERB. He finished off jumping plenty of tricky fences including my nemesis - wide skinny triple brushes without batting an eyelid, and also jumping a fair sized barrel jump into the water without spooking. He was getting quite keen and a bit fast coming off drops/through sunken road.
The only fence he was a bit confused about was a hedge brush with the corner trimmed (so effectively a corner style brush). The first impression was lets drift so I tightened my arm to block the shoulder and he ended up jumping the big bit, and clearly does not approve of touching a lot of brush!
I also jumped the big trakhner so felt pretty pleased with myself!
Finally I had a flatwork lesson today. Again Warren was very complimentry of the pony and said the stuff we were working on was really just nitpicking, that we could pretty much go and be competitive at novice and really not do much wrong. We were working on maintaining a consistent contact through the transitions and moving off right into the transitions. This involved going from walk to medium trot and trot to medium canter, progressing to halt to medium trot and walk to medium canter.
We were also working on doing 10m circles in counter flexion to help encourage him to straighten and to use his hind end more. It was very refreshing. I always come back feeling I've worked very hard and have somethging to work towards for next time.
So the start of our season will be at Aston le walls next week, followed by Tweseldown. I have quite high hopes as he is going super and I was a bit of a chicke and entered BE90s! I was having a confidence crisis and hadn't been xc yet when I did my entries. A bit frustrated now as I think he'd eat up a BE100 for breakfast and be ready for our return debute to Novice by April but looks like May now...Oh well. I am certainly hoping I will have an excuse to buy a top hat and tails towards the end of the season!
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