The Fuzzy Furry
Old Timer
Over the winter, I've occasionally nudged my way 
into various friends training sessions with a local SJ trainer and found him to be quite firm, but fair. (bit marmite for some!)
Haven't been since early April, so decided to return today for a session. This time the hour was shared with another lady, on her young horse.
Both of us aiming to stay on board, to achieve a clear, round a 75 track, but asking questions.
After warm up, we commenced a leg yielding exercise round a pole, over a pole & then away from the next pole. Repeated on both reins, I found that this really helped me focus on getting my Fuzzy between my legs, and moving away when asked to (her flat work is pretty, err, poor :redface3: ).
Then worked onto popping in the straight line over the ground pole, over a simple bar and over the next ground pole, this helped with keeping a straight line once coming off the corner.
Next we progressed to popping an oxer on the 3/4 line, swing right to pop an upright with fillers around x, then swing left to pop another oxer - a very good exercise to follow from the initial poles & leg yielding, as we were working on a 'slalom', which really required concentration!
This was followed by doing a mirror of this with another 3 fences, one of which was a double across a diagonal. NF had really got the hang of this by now, and I was having to ensure she didn't lock onto other fences when we came round th short end of the (big!) arena.
All good, so we then finished by doing what looked like a twisty course, but was in fact just good sweeping lines for the 10 jumps in total. Plenty of fillers, spreads and a wall in the course, which was 70 - 75, not big but set out to make us think. Was very happy as NF didn't bop any poles, nor did she think about stopping at anything.
I came away with a red face (from the heat!) a big head (from the trainers praise, as he was impressed by NF's skill set since we had gone last) and was very VERY chuffed, as NF loaded immediately at home when asked - and same again to come home :cool3:
V glad the clinic I chose was today, it was quite hot enough at 25/26 degrees, but tomorrows forecast for this area is very high 20's if not 30!
into various friends training sessions with a local SJ trainer and found him to be quite firm, but fair. (bit marmite for some!)Haven't been since early April, so decided to return today for a session. This time the hour was shared with another lady, on her young horse.
Both of us aiming to stay on board, to achieve a clear, round a 75 track, but asking questions.
After warm up, we commenced a leg yielding exercise round a pole, over a pole & then away from the next pole. Repeated on both reins, I found that this really helped me focus on getting my Fuzzy between my legs, and moving away when asked to (her flat work is pretty, err, poor :redface3: ).
Then worked onto popping in the straight line over the ground pole, over a simple bar and over the next ground pole, this helped with keeping a straight line once coming off the corner.
Next we progressed to popping an oxer on the 3/4 line, swing right to pop an upright with fillers around x, then swing left to pop another oxer - a very good exercise to follow from the initial poles & leg yielding, as we were working on a 'slalom', which really required concentration!
This was followed by doing a mirror of this with another 3 fences, one of which was a double across a diagonal. NF had really got the hang of this by now, and I was having to ensure she didn't lock onto other fences when we came round th short end of the (big!) arena.
All good, so we then finished by doing what looked like a twisty course, but was in fact just good sweeping lines for the 10 jumps in total. Plenty of fillers, spreads and a wall in the course, which was 70 - 75, not big but set out to make us think. Was very happy as NF didn't bop any poles, nor did she think about stopping at anything.
I came away with a red face (from the heat!) a big head (from the trainers praise, as he was impressed by NF's skill set since we had gone last) and was very VERY chuffed, as NF loaded immediately at home when asked - and same again to come home :cool3:
V glad the clinic I chose was today, it was quite hot enough at 25/26 degrees, but tomorrows forecast for this area is very high 20's if not 30!
