Rachel Jordans eloquent write up from last weekends area festival outing. Hmmm. I think the world was trying to tell us something this weekend, something like dont bother going to the show, but we didnt listen to it and ploughed on. 6.30 am start on Friday began with a non-starting lorry and a panic trying to tilt the cab and hotwire it. Got it running, loaded up and off we went for the Medium Restricted. Armas warmed up pretty well - this is becoming a pleasing pattern, only slipping one unrequired flying change past me, with me managing to stifle all of the rest that he was so desperate to do. Into the test arena and he suddenly went terribly green. Its strange that this always happens at Kings, he closes up and goes a bit backwards. Unfortunately all of his spooks and mis-steps happened in catastrophic movements, e.g. a single transition and 10m of canter that comprises movement 20 earned us some punishing 5s. So he finished up in 10th place, scraping into the prize giving on 61%. youtu.be/5tmJvm7-IkE Fast forward all day, and we came to the music class at 7pm... this seemed like a good idea at the time of entering, but I didnt appreciate how late the class would be run. Still, I think it was his most fluent run through of the freestyle floorplan and I was pretty happy with him, so a little disappointed to receive another 61%. youtu.be/2HIw4e8KQkw The judge was pretty scathing of the music, and I knew the half passes were weak, so I think we are back to the drawing board on both music and floorplan. If anyone has any suggestions please shout. His trot is teetering on the edge of sustaining a slower tempo with more cadence at HOME, but no where near that at shows so Im not desperate to change the music hugely... but if we are going to keep scraping 60/61 then Ill have to just have an etch-a-sketch moment and start over. On to Saturday, where we had the Elementary Open AF and I thought he stood a good chance, having settled the spooking during the music class the previous night, and having 2 good warm ups on Friday. Still battling the non-starting lorry, we got no more than 5 minutes from home when our route was blocked by a fallen tree across the road. The road was too narrow to turn round so we had to wait it out while a team of men came to clear it. Fortunately the team at Kings were understanding and let me slot in at the end of the class, so we arrived with just enough time to throw tack on and scoot into the warm up. I felt Armas back off on the previous day when I dropped my whip, so I warmed up for the Elementary without one, to make sure he was super in front of my leg. He let me play with passage-trot-medium trot transitions and the canter was better, with no hint of humpy changes bubbling under the surface. I went in to the test arena with high hopes and.... he strode confidently up the centre line, halted for an 8, and then dropped me! Ive never worked so hard to keep him going Managed to carry him round through the test for 63% and last but one place! youtu.be/9XC_ggNkd0U So that was a frustrating weekend, and Im not sure what I could have done differently, really. On the up side, his attitude is completely changed at shows - he is more focussed, more rideable, less worried about the other horses in the warm up and he stands on the lorry happily. These are huge changes and I have to keep reminding myself how far he has come. We took him to his first show in February and I had to keep apologising for bolting into people in the warm up, so its quite different now Wish we had some videos of the warm up really, because he felt quite grown up at times. Anyway, thats the pressure off over the winter. Time to take stock and work on tactics for the next 6 months or so. On one hand he needs to do some mediums to become less green, knowing that he wont score very highly until he can remain in front of the leg (and consequently secure in the contact). Hes got it at home, but loses it at a show. On the other hand, its a bit demoralising knowing that you are going to a show expecting to come last!!
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 06:38:38 +0000
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