Hels_Bells
Well-Known Member
So another BE Novice outing for Remy and the dizzy blonde today (will try to do an event report asap but really wasn't as eventful as the last one). And our personal worst dressage result of 42.5 to accompany it.
The worst thing is that we have been working so hard on our dressage and it's just soul destroying. This time last year we were at a stage where we were on the cusp of sub-30 scores and a 34.0 was bad for us. Admittedly we have gone up a level now but our results just get worse and worse and I am really beginning to despair and feel very down about it all.
Where to begin... Remy was in general very difficult when I first got him and I remember our first ever test after "ironing him out" I was just elated that he went calmly and didn't leave the arena etc (it was still probably our best ever test results relatively speaking!). Nearly every trainer etc who has seen him remarks that he is a lovely horse to watch, has expressive paces, elevation etc and generally has the ability to do very well especially at the higher levels which has always given me hope. Judges always seem to like him but I wonder if I'm doing him justice sometimes.
We soon began to event and worked at home just me and Remy with the odd lesson from our trainer who is a very much a put them in the outline, keep them there, push them forwards, no messing around sort of person. We would get good results but I never felt quite happy with the "forcing" of an outline and being hard on his mouth. I wanted to be in a place where I could have him come into an outline through working from behind and correctly etc not rely on heavy hands.
After a season with some reasonable marks the opportunity to get some lessons with a classical Spanish trainer arose. The person in question has and amazing record and trained with an SRS Maestro for many years to the highest levels. I was really interested to have a try and I just loved her style. It was all about the rear end and very little to do with harsh contact and she thought Remy was fantastic (she says she can not believe she would ever be so fond of a warmblood having worked with Spanish horses for 40 years) and she's taught us so much about "feel" and in training we have produced some moments of brilliance, however, when it comes to doing a test we just don't seem to be able to put out!!
So we have been having lessons pretty much twice weekly for some months now and have really improved problems such as unsteady head carriage and resistance of the bit that he was suffering from and have learned lots of new movements inc med trot and canter, leg yeilding, rein back etc (all required for Novice tests).
We have had a couple of events where trainer has come with us to guide us in warm-up etc, and we get him going really well but still it goes quite flat in the test. Today in warm-up I was delighted as he really started to produce his wonderful comfy trot (without trainer there) that we have got him to do at home but by the time we circled the arena for our test he started to poke his nose and resist the bit and I just knew after one or two movements this was unlikely to be a good one. And so we scored our worst result ever. They just keep going down and steadily down.
The past 2 weeks we have been having some problems with Remy in that he is basically a bit of a lazy guy as our test results constantly suggest that he just "trundles" along rather than making an effort. We know he's got it in there but it takes a lot to get him to produce "it". We've addressed feeding, looked carefully at his weekly routine, introduced spurs, had his back done, worked on warm-up plans etc etc but he just doesn't light up consistently like we know he can from time to time! So we decided to introduce the schooling whip to give him a tap to wake him up and get him to focus and put some effort in to his work. The first time it worked brilliantly, but since then he has just thrown tantrum after tantrum once he is tapped with the whip. He is just so inconsistent. One day X works the next day it produces a tantrum. Then Y works 3 or 4 times then he learns to resist it and finds new way of evading it.
I'm just really despairing. I'm a competent rider, fairly switched on and level, I have a horse with great potential and we work really hard with a great trainer. Yet we just can't seem to get the results that those we compete against do. One of my favourite sayings in life is "the harder I work, the luckier I get".... at the moment it's more like "the harder we work, the less rewards we reap". I just don't know where to go from here and am just feeling really fed up, down, sad and a bit miserable!
I know this post has been fairly self-indulgent/of a cathartic nature, but any good old HHO thoughts, vibes, comments, words of wisdom or encouragement would be very welcome! All suggestions and ideas welcome.
Once it's finished uploading to YouTube I'll post a link to today's test plus some previous ones in time order in case anyone wants to take a look to see how he's changed over time. I know where we're going wrong but in our tests we just can't seem to cut out the rot.
The worst thing is that we have been working so hard on our dressage and it's just soul destroying. This time last year we were at a stage where we were on the cusp of sub-30 scores and a 34.0 was bad for us. Admittedly we have gone up a level now but our results just get worse and worse and I am really beginning to despair and feel very down about it all.
Where to begin... Remy was in general very difficult when I first got him and I remember our first ever test after "ironing him out" I was just elated that he went calmly and didn't leave the arena etc (it was still probably our best ever test results relatively speaking!). Nearly every trainer etc who has seen him remarks that he is a lovely horse to watch, has expressive paces, elevation etc and generally has the ability to do very well especially at the higher levels which has always given me hope. Judges always seem to like him but I wonder if I'm doing him justice sometimes.
We soon began to event and worked at home just me and Remy with the odd lesson from our trainer who is a very much a put them in the outline, keep them there, push them forwards, no messing around sort of person. We would get good results but I never felt quite happy with the "forcing" of an outline and being hard on his mouth. I wanted to be in a place where I could have him come into an outline through working from behind and correctly etc not rely on heavy hands.
After a season with some reasonable marks the opportunity to get some lessons with a classical Spanish trainer arose. The person in question has and amazing record and trained with an SRS Maestro for many years to the highest levels. I was really interested to have a try and I just loved her style. It was all about the rear end and very little to do with harsh contact and she thought Remy was fantastic (she says she can not believe she would ever be so fond of a warmblood having worked with Spanish horses for 40 years) and she's taught us so much about "feel" and in training we have produced some moments of brilliance, however, when it comes to doing a test we just don't seem to be able to put out!!
So we have been having lessons pretty much twice weekly for some months now and have really improved problems such as unsteady head carriage and resistance of the bit that he was suffering from and have learned lots of new movements inc med trot and canter, leg yeilding, rein back etc (all required for Novice tests).
We have had a couple of events where trainer has come with us to guide us in warm-up etc, and we get him going really well but still it goes quite flat in the test. Today in warm-up I was delighted as he really started to produce his wonderful comfy trot (without trainer there) that we have got him to do at home but by the time we circled the arena for our test he started to poke his nose and resist the bit and I just knew after one or two movements this was unlikely to be a good one. And so we scored our worst result ever. They just keep going down and steadily down.
The past 2 weeks we have been having some problems with Remy in that he is basically a bit of a lazy guy as our test results constantly suggest that he just "trundles" along rather than making an effort. We know he's got it in there but it takes a lot to get him to produce "it". We've addressed feeding, looked carefully at his weekly routine, introduced spurs, had his back done, worked on warm-up plans etc etc but he just doesn't light up consistently like we know he can from time to time! So we decided to introduce the schooling whip to give him a tap to wake him up and get him to focus and put some effort in to his work. The first time it worked brilliantly, but since then he has just thrown tantrum after tantrum once he is tapped with the whip. He is just so inconsistent. One day X works the next day it produces a tantrum. Then Y works 3 or 4 times then he learns to resist it and finds new way of evading it.
I'm just really despairing. I'm a competent rider, fairly switched on and level, I have a horse with great potential and we work really hard with a great trainer. Yet we just can't seem to get the results that those we compete against do. One of my favourite sayings in life is "the harder I work, the luckier I get".... at the moment it's more like "the harder we work, the less rewards we reap". I just don't know where to go from here and am just feeling really fed up, down, sad and a bit miserable!
I know this post has been fairly self-indulgent/of a cathartic nature, but any good old HHO thoughts, vibes, comments, words of wisdom or encouragement would be very welcome! All suggestions and ideas welcome.
Once it's finished uploading to YouTube I'll post a link to today's test plus some previous ones in time order in case anyone wants to take a look to see how he's changed over time. I know where we're going wrong but in our tests we just can't seem to cut out the rot.
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