Today we set off to Munstead another new event to me, and despite all the recent rain the ground had held up really well. I warmed up for dressage giving Soap a good 45mins to warm in. During the warm up I noticed he did a few things that I thought didn’t feel quite right, but assumed I could put that down to freshness after a week of light work because of the recent torrential weather. We went in for our test and he tensed up which had a dramatic affect on his paces, tight, hollow, and not as well balanced as normal. On the left lead canter out of the circle and down the long side he changed legs and went disunited, and to top it all I went wrong! Despite what I felt was a really rubbish test for Soap he got 38.5 which was in the top half of our section which had many scores in the 40’s, and even an 8 for one movement! I discussed my thoughts about him not being 100% with my mother back at the trailer, and mulled it over. I decided to take him to the SJ warm up pop a few fences and see what he felt like. He jumped ok in the warm up but not a patch on how he was going in our last lesson, we went in the ring and started our round clear but not great over 1 and 2, then he had 3 and 4 down. We were on a good stride to both of them so I decided to call it a day there and retire as he clearly wasn’t 100%. He came in from the field during the week with an over-reach on his off fore which has healed well, but I think that possibly when he did that he strained his off hind quarters at the same time. We got back to the yard and I put him to bed in his magnetic rug to help ease any sore muscles, and have called my physio to come and give him a check over. I’m pretty confident that he will be fine after a massage and a few days off, and we will be back on track for Larkhill BE90 in April, and as they say ‘there’s always another day’…
