Well after a short summer holiday (5 days in France for me, 5 days in the field for him) Dustry and I entered some more combined training at West Wilts EC hoping for a better performance in the show jumping phase than last time. We had a lesson 2 days before and I am still struggling to ride a good corner and straight line to a fence when coming off the right rein (his stiffer rein). We worked on a handy exercise where by you ride the corner to the fence but pass it on a straight line either to…

After the 2012 Olympics it seems all anyone horsey could talk about was Fairfax girths, our Team GB secret weapon! Intrigued about their effect, but also way too broke to buy one in order to find out for myself what they were like I carried on with my regular shaped leather girth. As luck would have it one of the ladies at my yard won a Fairfax girth in a competition (lucky devil!) so when it arrived I got to speak to her first hand about how she felt it helped her horse and if she thought it was worth…

It’s frustrating to have an empty paddock, and a stack of show jumps, but be thwarted by ankle shatteringly hard ground. Thankfully we’ve finally had enough rain to make the going good, so wasting no time this morning I got as many jumps as I could physically move from the arena into the field, and set up a few fences. Groomed, tacked and, studded up we began warming up. Dustry has been a little….how shall I put this?….over exuberant? of late, and so I was just aiming to have him be receptive and to calmly school around a few jumps.…

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.…