blood_magik
Well-Known Member
Because there's nothing quite like turning up at a show to find none other than Scott Brash wandering around the lorry park. 
Anyhoo...
On New Trainer's (NT) advice, I headed over to Edinburgh to jump my second 1.05m (and my first Discovery) with the saintly Mr. Blue a fortnight ago. Since he doesn't fit in our lorry, my Dad let me borrow his car so I could take Blue in the trailer - cue a last minute practice session before he left for Dubai so I'd had at least one attempt at hitching/unhitching before the day of the show.
The day of, I managed to hitch up without too much trouble only to discover that my magnetic L-plates wouldn't stick to both the trailer and the car. I ended up having to raid the underfloor of the lorry so I could duct tape them on.
Crisis averted (just), we managed to get the boys loaded and left a good twenty minutes ahead of schedule.
It was pretty busy when we arrived but we managed to find a space that would require minimal reversing to get out of when it was time to leave. I thought we were early but it turned out they were already walking the course for my first class so I dragged SuperGroom into the ring for a quick whiz round before they rang the bell to clear the course. I'd been drawn 48th to go (out of 52) so we watched the first ten go before heading back to the trailer to start getting Blue ready.
He felt pretty good once I was on him so I concentrated on getting him listening rather as he was already nice and forwards - basically trying to replicate our warm-up from the weekend before. They rang the bell pretty much as soon as we were in the ring so we popped up into canter after showing Blue the brick wall fence and headed round to the first.
It started off pretty well. I got a good stride to my nemesis, the one stride double, at three but didn't react quickly enough to get him back before four and we got close. Thanks to Blue's long legs, we scrambled over it and left it up. The plank at six had caused issues for quite a few people so I made sure to sit up and check as soon as we were over five and then Blue skipped round to finish clear.
We were drawn last to go in the jump off. The only other person through from my section went clear in a fast time so we went in aiming for a nice double clear. As soon as we were over two, I kicked on a bit. We made it over the planks and the oxer at four, and then it went out of the window slightly.
I kicked on again but didn't get Blue back enough and saw a long one into a two stride double - I knew we were going to get close but couldn't do much to stop it and we ended up taking the front rail. After that, there was only one more fence and he left that up to finish second on 4 faults.
Video here:
[video=youtube;754EMaCGLLA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=754EMaCGLLA[/video]
Blue felt a little tired when I got on for my second class (my fault - had expected the disco to be two phase) and I somehow lost the ability to see a stride coming into my warm-up fences so I wasn't feeling especially confident as I went into the ring. It didn't go particularly well from the start - I made the mistake of kicking on as I stupidly assumed that being tired would mean Blue not making distances, when in fact he was still getting them easily, and we ended up getting into a bit of trouble after fence five. It was an 8 stride distance from five to six and after the third or fourth I realised that we weren't going to get there on 8. But instead of kicking on or even holding, I sat there like a lemon.
Well, thank God for honest horses. Blue chipped in and tried to scramble over the fence rather than stopping, and I somehow managed to slip my reins to keep from socking him in the mouth (not the best reward given that he'd just saved my bacon). I would have had to circle before coming to the next fence but truth be told, I didn't want to continue in the same vein in case I ended up hurting Blue's confidence - he's not long turned 7 and we're still a relatively new partnership (3 months).
I also realised that doing 3 rounds doesn't work for us so I need to choose my classes a bit more carefully in future if I'm wanting to do more than one.
Video:
[video=youtube;VrWZhbqka0U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrWZhbqka0U[/video]
And because he's a dude when we do get it right
(photographer was on holiday so only have a screenshot of him):
So not the outing I'd hoped for, but we made it back home with the trailer still attached to the car and both boys still safely on board so I shouldn't really complain. I did set up some longer distances at home last week to work on sitting up straight after my first fence, and it went really well so I'm hopeful that I'll get it right at our next show.
Beau started jumping again this morning and he felt great, so the plan is to jump him around the British Novice on the Saturday and then have a go at the Discovery on the Sunday to see how we get on. Ideally, I'd love to be back up at 1.05m by the start of next year but we'll see - we have a few braking issues (Beau likes to think he's in control) that need sorting before the fences start getting bigger so we've got plenty to be working on just now.
Onwards and upwards.
Anyhoo...
On New Trainer's (NT) advice, I headed over to Edinburgh to jump my second 1.05m (and my first Discovery) with the saintly Mr. Blue a fortnight ago. Since he doesn't fit in our lorry, my Dad let me borrow his car so I could take Blue in the trailer - cue a last minute practice session before he left for Dubai so I'd had at least one attempt at hitching/unhitching before the day of the show.
The day of, I managed to hitch up without too much trouble only to discover that my magnetic L-plates wouldn't stick to both the trailer and the car. I ended up having to raid the underfloor of the lorry so I could duct tape them on.
Crisis averted (just), we managed to get the boys loaded and left a good twenty minutes ahead of schedule.It was pretty busy when we arrived but we managed to find a space that would require minimal reversing to get out of when it was time to leave. I thought we were early but it turned out they were already walking the course for my first class so I dragged SuperGroom into the ring for a quick whiz round before they rang the bell to clear the course. I'd been drawn 48th to go (out of 52) so we watched the first ten go before heading back to the trailer to start getting Blue ready.
He felt pretty good once I was on him so I concentrated on getting him listening rather as he was already nice and forwards - basically trying to replicate our warm-up from the weekend before. They rang the bell pretty much as soon as we were in the ring so we popped up into canter after showing Blue the brick wall fence and headed round to the first.
It started off pretty well. I got a good stride to my nemesis, the one stride double, at three but didn't react quickly enough to get him back before four and we got close. Thanks to Blue's long legs, we scrambled over it and left it up. The plank at six had caused issues for quite a few people so I made sure to sit up and check as soon as we were over five and then Blue skipped round to finish clear.
We were drawn last to go in the jump off. The only other person through from my section went clear in a fast time so we went in aiming for a nice double clear. As soon as we were over two, I kicked on a bit. We made it over the planks and the oxer at four, and then it went out of the window slightly.
I kicked on again but didn't get Blue back enough and saw a long one into a two stride double - I knew we were going to get close but couldn't do much to stop it and we ended up taking the front rail. After that, there was only one more fence and he left that up to finish second on 4 faults.
Video here:
[video=youtube;754EMaCGLLA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=754EMaCGLLA[/video]
Blue felt a little tired when I got on for my second class (my fault - had expected the disco to be two phase) and I somehow lost the ability to see a stride coming into my warm-up fences so I wasn't feeling especially confident as I went into the ring. It didn't go particularly well from the start - I made the mistake of kicking on as I stupidly assumed that being tired would mean Blue not making distances, when in fact he was still getting them easily, and we ended up getting into a bit of trouble after fence five. It was an 8 stride distance from five to six and after the third or fourth I realised that we weren't going to get there on 8. But instead of kicking on or even holding, I sat there like a lemon.
Well, thank God for honest horses. Blue chipped in and tried to scramble over the fence rather than stopping, and I somehow managed to slip my reins to keep from socking him in the mouth (not the best reward given that he'd just saved my bacon). I would have had to circle before coming to the next fence but truth be told, I didn't want to continue in the same vein in case I ended up hurting Blue's confidence - he's not long turned 7 and we're still a relatively new partnership (3 months).
I also realised that doing 3 rounds doesn't work for us so I need to choose my classes a bit more carefully in future if I'm wanting to do more than one.
Video:
[video=youtube;VrWZhbqka0U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrWZhbqka0U[/video]
And because he's a dude when we do get it right
(photographer was on holiday so only have a screenshot of him):So not the outing I'd hoped for, but we made it back home with the trailer still attached to the car and both boys still safely on board so I shouldn't really complain. I did set up some longer distances at home last week to work on sitting up straight after my first fence, and it went really well so I'm hopeful that I'll get it right at our next show.
Beau started jumping again this morning and he felt great, so the plan is to jump him around the British Novice on the Saturday and then have a go at the Discovery on the Sunday to see how we get on. Ideally, I'd love to be back up at 1.05m by the start of next year but we'll see - we have a few braking issues (Beau likes to think he's in control
) that need sorting before the fences start getting bigger so we've got plenty to be working on just now. Onwards and upwards.
I think we'd both switched off a little by the 1.05 so while it wasn't horrendous, it wasn't particularly good. We just need a bit more practice over those bigger fences so it's like second nature when we do venture out to shows.