Today after having our competition plans last weekend scuppered by Dustry’s love sickness we set off to Elmwood for some combined training on grass. This is a great venue and we’ve been here several times before for sj and xc schooling. You could choose between 2x tests a BD Prelim or a BE test so we plumped for BE90 test 95 with a round of SJ at 80cms.
He was super to warm up, and did some of his best work to date. Having last been out eventing he kept locking on to the xc fences dotted about near the dressage warm up and he was also very interested in what was going on over at the sj warm up! He did some lovely work in his test and scored 3x 8’s the most he’s got in any test to date, sadly he was a little distracted by the xc fences and so the test was inattentive at times with him chucking his head, and the tension spoilt our right lead canter transition which I had to correct. Despite that we scored 35.5 which I think could have been lower still had the notion of jumping not got into his brain. It’s all part of his learning curve though and the fact that he got excited by the fences is a good sign in my book, a little more eventing practice and hopefully he will get that before the fun jumpy bit comes the round and round in circles bit! I’m going to find some BD to take him to next to get his head back in the dressage zone, and hopefully gain some arena final/winter qualifier scores.
Then over to the showjumping and he warmed up really well, absolutely pinging! We went in the ring and he did a fab round, no hesitation at all, just keen and pingy. We had the first fence down as I wasn’t riding forwards to it enough, and I was guilty of holding for a few strides on a couple of the other fences. I must RIDE MORE FORWARDS, NOT HOLD! Then either he tapped the filler or the wind blew it down, but the filler of the final fence also fell, but the pole remained up. We only got given 4 pens so I am guessing knocking down fillers doesn’t count?…not sure?!
Any how we were 14th after dressage and moved up to 11th out of 22 after the jumping. It was just one of those days where you get that feeling that ‘this horse could be something special’ and as such I am still beaming with his performance. He’s come so far and feels so scopey now. I am excited about his next eventing attempt next month!