On Saturday I travelled with a client to Watership down for a hack - I can't believe my job sometimes! And taught a couple of lessons. My pupils did their first spot of jumping and very nicely too!
Afterwards a friend and I took Lacey and Squirrel out for a long ride to have a look at a field that may be suitable for canter work. I've hopefully found a very local canter track, 5 minutes hack away to use but owners are away at the moment so waiting to hear back from that. We finished the day doing some loading pracise with Lacey.
She finds travelling very stressful so starts barging and trying to run back to her stable the moment she is faced with the ramps so I want to teach her travelling is not a big scary deal before we attempt to take her out. She has already improved - travel boots and a tail bandadge used to trigger trembling and bolshiness but with practise she is happy again.
Well Lacey has learnt a new trick. She went right in the first time, and stood there snorting her head off with a lot of carrots being pumped into her stomach. Second time she attempted to bolt back to her stable a couple of times, and with me feebly holding onto the lunge rope, skidding behind her, trying to get some gripe with my feet so I could stop her; Jason did an excellent superman impression and grabbed her as she cantered past to make her stop!
So she quickly learnt that didn't work. So she just decided not to go in at all. We got her in twice more and by the end of it she didn't seem stressed, just stubborn. So it's going to take a bit longer than I thought. I want EVERYTHING to be easy and calm before we take her out. It's a long long project but I have no doubt she'll get there.
Sunday dawned bright and early for me, with schooling Lacey at the crack of dawn. She was fantastic, she is getting very relaxed and calm. Her attitude is amazing me - she's gone from saying "Oh this is hard. I can't do it. I WON'T do it. Nope, can't. Won't." que rearing and spinning; to now she says "Oh this is hard. I'm not sure I can do it...but I'll try" which is WONDERFUL.
She did the most lovely canterwork, just relaxed, chilled and even around a third of the school (so a 20x40 outside track basically) without charging which is quite big for her. She was excellent again on Tuesday (hacked on Monday). She is still stiff to the right rein and finds it hard to do flexions in that direction as well as leg yielding, but we did plenty of that and some canter spirals. She's getting there!
After riding Lacey on Sunday we went to look at a potentional project. It was a little 3 year old unraced/untrained Thoroughbred. She was sweet but much smaller than I expected - all withers! Anyway, I just didn't feel 'it' really so passed. To be honest, that idea is going to take a back seat and looking at how manic the next two weeks are going to be I'm quite relieved!
Dashed back to the yard to drag Squirrel in to go show jumping! Its only
unaffiliated as didn't see the point in regestering him BS for in essence just a month. Though in hindsight after he popped 1.50m on Friday perhaps we should of!
We arrived at Crofton Manor at 2.30 just as the 85cm was finishing so beautifully in time. I walkd the 90cm and it looked like a fairly tricky course. They made full use of the arena, and the course looked like it was just dying for you to really ride lines and into corners. Watching others, it was very apparant which riders used to the space available and which didn't.
I decided if we went clear I would just have some fun in the jump off, we rarely jump against the clock so I decided to take some risks and see what we could do.
We went double clear and into the lead by 3 seconds! And we kept it!
The 1m was nice and up to height and again wanted you to really ride it. It was run with the second half timed but as it was a relatively small class they wanted everyone to ride against the clock as well. Unfortunately I held for the second jump and we had it down but still went fast against the clock. We were the fastest 4 faulter and came 7th.
He was loving it, and I am LOVING my Ablion close contact saddle.
He had Monday off and then yesterday I went on a LONG fast hack to our new 'canter' field. We only did 2 circuits of the field as the 2 hour hack involved a lot of cantering anyway. Unfortunately he pulled a shoe off on the way home and was quite sore on the stoney bits, but my farrier came out and put a shoe on.
Busy week ahead with XC schooling on Friday with Warren Lampard and a combined training on Saturday. Next Wednesday he is having his back done which may result in a couple of well earned days off!
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