daveismycat
Well-Known Member
As a bit of an introduction for you, I've had a pretty useless 2010 so far, to the point where I'd been thinking that I should stop jumping all together. My 16 year old mare is fairly low milage and was really enjoying her jumping at 80-90cm at home but we had a dreadful outing at a 75cm hunter trials in April where I got eliminated at the first fence as she simply refused to jump. Since then, I've had no confidence at all, and was even thinking about letting her into semi-retiement as I was worried it was her way of telling me she wanted to slow down. She has continued to jump well at home, so I entered for a 66cm ODE at Houston House (which was later ammended to 75cm) thinking it'd be make or break. This week I had an Ernest Dillon lesson and he gave me a big kick up the backside. I've had a few falls so have been riding really defensively and not getting a good enough forward canter into the fence, resulting in awkward uncomfy gazelle leaps, which makes me more defensive and so on! I spent Friday night worrying after walking the cross country course which was much chunkier than the fateful hunter trials. 
So, yesterday morning we set out at the crack of dawn, all the way across Scotland (literally), to arrive with not too much time to warm up for our 9.40am dressage. We did some pretty good camel impersonations in the warm up (Not really like M, but I didn't have enough time to really get her to soften), and went in to our beautifully sloping arena (!!) to do a poor test for 38.5. Not soft, not round, not relaxed. But not a bad mark for our section/arena!
Got changed straight away - they were running XC straight after SJ so were told to wear XC colours & BP for SJ too. Jumped a few practice fences thinking about Ernest telling me to "KICK, KICK, KICK!" and that is what I did. The poor person before me couldn't get her nappy horse over fence 3 so I went in a little early. I went in and jumped 1-5 well, she had a look at the filler at 6 but locked on and jumped it, and then I couldn't remember where I was going so lost all rhythm, but then kicked on to a big spread at 7, then turned for the final line, jumped 8 well, and then coming to the last double she'd locked on and was taking me to the fence, I thought 'bloody hell, we're actually going clear", stupidly stopped kicking so she just ran out of steam for the second element. What a numpty I am. Represented and she hopped over beautifully. Que big pony pats!
I was a bit gormless and went back to the lorry for a quick drink of water, so they were waiting for me at the XC start. Luckily they let me pop the warm up log (even this was a challenge at our hunter trials in April!), and then go straight away. The first fence was a tiny (hurrah!) very plain log which I almost show jumped - I wasn't going to let her stop! And then kicked on up the hill to an upto height rolltop and box-type thing. I couldn't believe we'd got that far, so panicked a bit that we now had an open ditch at 4! Trotted down the slippy slope to it, and I could not believe it when she sweetly popped straight over. I must've looked like this ---> :O . Carried on kicking and popped a drop to a log, a hanging log, a steeplechase fence, the water, rails, pallisade from dark to light, a narrow-ish pheasant feeder, and a drop to the last, a brush. She locked on to every fence and more shockingly, I started to trust her. By the last fence, I was like this -->
I couldn't believe it; from not expecting to complete, we'd only gone clear!!
Turns out the cross country had caused a bit of bother and there weren't many clears. I had quite a few time faults, but I was just out to finish and trotted some of the slippy bits as I didn't have studs in and there was torrential rain. I was leading my section when we left, but there were still 10 or so results to go up, so I probably came 11th but don't care as I'm so proud of my pone!
So Scottish peeps, where would be good for us to go next??
So, yesterday morning we set out at the crack of dawn, all the way across Scotland (literally), to arrive with not too much time to warm up for our 9.40am dressage. We did some pretty good camel impersonations in the warm up (Not really like M, but I didn't have enough time to really get her to soften), and went in to our beautifully sloping arena (!!) to do a poor test for 38.5. Not soft, not round, not relaxed.
But not a bad mark for our section/arena!Got changed straight away - they were running XC straight after SJ so were told to wear XC colours & BP for SJ too. Jumped a few practice fences thinking about Ernest telling me to "KICK, KICK, KICK!" and that is what I did. The poor person before me couldn't get her nappy horse over fence 3 so I went in a little early. I went in and jumped 1-5 well, she had a look at the filler at 6 but locked on and jumped it, and then I couldn't remember where I was going so lost all rhythm, but then kicked on to a big spread at 7, then turned for the final line, jumped 8 well, and then coming to the last double she'd locked on and was taking me to the fence, I thought 'bloody hell, we're actually going clear", stupidly stopped kicking so she just ran out of steam for the second element.
What a numpty I am. Represented and she hopped over beautifully. Que big pony pats!I was a bit gormless and went back to the lorry for a quick drink of water, so they were waiting for me at the XC start. Luckily they let me pop the warm up log (even this was a challenge at our hunter trials in April!), and then go straight away. The first fence was a tiny (hurrah!) very plain log which I almost show jumped - I wasn't going to let her stop! And then kicked on up the hill to an upto height rolltop and box-type thing. I couldn't believe we'd got that far, so panicked a bit that we now had an open ditch at 4! Trotted down the slippy slope to it, and I could not believe it when she sweetly popped straight over. I must've looked like this ---> :O . Carried on kicking and popped a drop to a log, a hanging log, a steeplechase fence, the water, rails, pallisade from dark to light, a narrow-ish pheasant feeder, and a drop to the last, a brush. She locked on to every fence and more shockingly, I started to trust her. By the last fence, I was like this -->
I couldn't believe it; from not expecting to complete, we'd only gone clear!!
Turns out the cross country had caused a bit of bother and there weren't many clears. I had quite a few time faults, but I was just out to finish and trotted some of the slippy bits as I didn't have studs in and there was torrential rain. I was leading my section when we left, but there were still 10 or so results to go up, so I probably came 11th but don't care as I'm so proud of my pone!
So Scottish peeps, where would be good for us to go next??
