catembi
Well-Known Member
As you may or may not know, following the death of Cat earlier this year, I've been struggling to bond sj with my new horse Adrian. After a few
bsja shows, we dropped back to unaff for a couple of months to try to get the partnership to gel. Today was our first bsja after the 'bonding' gap.
Was hoping to start with the CR which is usually small & see how we went, but the CR was the same height as BN ie quite a step up from the trailblazers stuff we've been doing.
2 doubles, all the parallels mighty wide, plus a brand new sparking set of jumps!! Was wondering whether to just go home as I didn't want to undo all our good work by throwing him in at the deep end.
Thistle was in the next lorry, complete with an entire tack shop's worth of bits to help me in my quest to find some brakes. Started off with our usual french link snaffle - no brakes, swapped to a Dr Bristol, still no brakes. He was jumping very confidently so decided to try him in the CR and haul him back to trot if I really couldn't manage, & it was soon time for us to go in.
At 5, A is still a bit new to all this jumping lark & it's the first time he's jumped indoors at The College. Tripped over the first jump as he was busy taking it all in. No 2 was a big (compared with trailblazers) // - the sort of thing you need to commit to. I was a bit
but as soon as I turned him towards it, he locked in like a guided missile and we were off. No 3 was an upright which we sailed over. 4 was a bright double with a // in - no probs. Was having a lot of trouble slowing down & turning, but I have to let him go for the last couple of strides so he will stop fighting & look where he's going. 5 and 6 were uprights, 7 another double & 8 another big, spooky // which he flew. Somewhere along the line had another one down.
So it was back to the drawing board. Took out the Dr Bristol, tried a myler with a port mouth. Got carted off round the warm up without even pointing him at a jump so swapped back to the snaffle. Better the devil you know...
It was time for our BN round. The more he jumps, the more he settles, so was clear & just had 1 down in the jump off for no reason at all. He made it all seem very easy.
I really wanted our first DC for BN & we soooo nearly got it. But he jumped really well, was v bold, never even thought about looking at any of the fillers etc & even tho we were a bit fast & furious, at least we're doing it together as a partnership rather than as 2 separate beings, each with no idea what on earth the other one wants!!
And a big thank you to Thistle (who did really well) for letting me raid her bit collection.
Was hoping to start with the CR which is usually small & see how we went, but the CR was the same height as BN ie quite a step up from the trailblazers stuff we've been doing.
Thistle was in the next lorry, complete with an entire tack shop's worth of bits to help me in my quest to find some brakes. Started off with our usual french link snaffle - no brakes, swapped to a Dr Bristol, still no brakes. He was jumping very confidently so decided to try him in the CR and haul him back to trot if I really couldn't manage, & it was soon time for us to go in.
At 5, A is still a bit new to all this jumping lark & it's the first time he's jumped indoors at The College. Tripped over the first jump as he was busy taking it all in. No 2 was a big (compared with trailblazers) // - the sort of thing you need to commit to. I was a bit
So it was back to the drawing board. Took out the Dr Bristol, tried a myler with a port mouth. Got carted off round the warm up without even pointing him at a jump so swapped back to the snaffle. Better the devil you know...
It was time for our BN round. The more he jumps, the more he settles, so was clear & just had 1 down in the jump off for no reason at all. He made it all seem very easy.
I really wanted our first DC for BN & we soooo nearly got it. But he jumped really well, was v bold, never even thought about looking at any of the fillers etc & even tho we were a bit fast & furious, at least we're doing it together as a partnership rather than as 2 separate beings, each with no idea what on earth the other one wants!!
And a big thank you to Thistle (who did really well) for letting me raid her bit collection.
