Practice make perfect right? So with that in mind I am on a mission to get Dustry as much show jumping practise as possible in order to bring on his show jumping skills. Working full time, with the ground too hard atm and arena too small at home to do anything very constructive jumping wise I have resorted to boxing him up of a Thursday evening after work and hiring a local arena and jumps. I’m not so sure the rush hour traffic appreciate my new midweek activities but I’m thoroughly enjoying them! 😉 This evening’s session was particularly good…
Sometimes success isn’t always measured in rosettes! You know when you have one of those outings where despite the results on paper you are thrilled with the way it went? Yeah we just had one of those! In my quest to turn Dustry into an eventer I am having to piece him together phase by phase, and along the way try to train out any behaviour resulting from his years in racing. His flat work is really well established now and he can pull out a lovely dressage test, but throw something new into the mix and his way of…
Get your basics right and the rest will follow. I know this, we ALL know this, but I bet I am not the only one guilty of skipping over the basics. Here’s what I’m talking about… In racing it is pretty typical for jockeys to mount from a leg up, or a walking leg up, getting chucked into the plate from a willing ‘legger-upper’. Obviously when taking on an ex-racer this needs to be addressed and re-schooled away so that they become obedient to mount from the floor, block, or leg up and remain still until asked to move away.…
My fantastic sponsor Mountain Horse have recently sent me a pair of their gorgeous ‘Supreme’ long boots. Prior to this pair I had a pair of their classic high rider long boots. The version of High Riders that I had were plain leather, no laces, zip up with an elastic insert. They were great boots, and hard wearing but once I had tried on the ‘Supreme’ style I realised exactly why it was named that! For starters my new Supreme long boots smell GORGEOUS! I half contemplated never wearing them and just keeping them to sniff and admire! I can’t…
When I began initial ridden work with Dustry he was very light in the contact, he dropped behind the bit, and although he looked like he was in an ‘on the bit’ frame he wasn’t working through and it was very hard to get him to work forwards into the contact. The flip side of that would be that occasionally he would hollow, and invert his neck, becoming suddenly heavy in the hand. This all pointed to dental issues preventing him from being able to happily accept the contact so I booked him in to see an EDT. I prefer to…
Having re-schooled (to varying levels) a few ex-racehorses now I thought it might be an idea if I wrote a few blog posts detailing some of the issues that I have come across during the process of recycling an ex-racer. This is by no means a ‘how to guide to re-schooling ex-racers’ it’s just a catalogue of my thoughts and discoveries which I hope might be able to help other people who are in the process of, or thinking about taking on an ex-racer to re-train. So I will start at the beginning….choosing your horse. For me there is always one main factor which influences my decision,…