HufflyPuffly
Well-Known Member
And you are the perfect example of a rider with a very talented but quirky horse who has had to learn how no one rule fits all.xxx
haha there is that, she does it all, behind the vertical, in front of the vertical, quite nicely on the vertical but with mouth wide open, vertical waving to the judges (thankfully this was a brief phase for her!) etc.
To first sort our contact 'issues' out I had to stop pussy footing around it and actually take hold. I had to stop letting her evade me and then me dropping the contact, this invariably led to moments of btv before she learnt to take the contact forward. Without me keeping a contact she would never have learnt to keep hold either!
Sorry a simplified version and I'm not saying we're holding/leaning on each other just that the contact is a two way communication.
There have been times, as have been said, that going btv has massively improved her with the aim of it strengthening her rather than it being the end result. Currently we are using a lower longer frame for canter work as she isn't quite strong enough for the more advanced 'up' frame, however if someone thought that it is what we want as we work up the levels I'd think that they've never had to train their own horses!
There are plenty of frankly hideous pics of us out there but I'd hope people would think that they were showing just a moment in time. With regards judging, we don't tend to get btv comments but do get a lot of 'inconsistant contact' and 'tense' comments, even in tests which are high 60%'s touching 70%, the rest of the work was nice so our scores were good but we still lost marks for the contact and frame.
Sorry _GG_ you set me off, I'll bow out with my mumbled ramblings now
x x