ihatework
Well-Known Member
Green being an understatement!
I had rather foolishly taken for granted Mr. Goody-two-shoes, Polish-my-halo, A* swot student in everything he has done and just assumed he would come out and take his first XC in his stride.
Unfortunately I was wrong
In hindsight the long trek to Lyneham was not what he needed, but you live and learn. The facilities there are amazing, but the allweather loop is not for first timers.
He came out eyes on stalks, ducking and a diving, and really needed diddy diddy stuff to get him going. All we had were a couple of 80cm and a couple of smaller intro type fences. So he did those and by the end was stringing them together reasonably confidently with a muddle puddle water splash between the brush and the house.
We decided to finish with the ditch. Not a big ditch, but properly dig out and enough for them to look at.
He had a gawp - didnt get it.
Then tried to do that walk through it thing when you can just see them putting their front legs in then scraping up the back of their tendons as they reverse out.
I was glad I had invested in giant sized xc boots last week!
Alas that frightened him and from then on we had a proper welsh anxiety shut down. 15 minutes on and we didnt look to be going over a ditch any time soon and we had one more to get schooled and were running out of hire time.
So I pulled the jockey off and told her to run back to the lorry and get the other whilst I stayed out in worked him in hand. THANKFULLY, after what seemed to be forever, he shut his eye, held his breath, and pretty much landed in my lap .... but at least he was the other side of the ditch!! From there the mental block subsided a bit and I jogged besides him over the ditch a few more times. Then called it a day. Met jockey coming over on the other one and heard given up? Nah said I, jumped it 10 times now!
So there we go, it was all going to easy - we have homework in the form of ditches!!
A little video if interested
https://youtu.be/x7pkxUD47zw
I had rather foolishly taken for granted Mr. Goody-two-shoes, Polish-my-halo, A* swot student in everything he has done and just assumed he would come out and take his first XC in his stride.
Unfortunately I was wrong
In hindsight the long trek to Lyneham was not what he needed, but you live and learn. The facilities there are amazing, but the allweather loop is not for first timers.
He came out eyes on stalks, ducking and a diving, and really needed diddy diddy stuff to get him going. All we had were a couple of 80cm and a couple of smaller intro type fences. So he did those and by the end was stringing them together reasonably confidently with a muddle puddle water splash between the brush and the house.
We decided to finish with the ditch. Not a big ditch, but properly dig out and enough for them to look at.
He had a gawp - didnt get it.
Then tried to do that walk through it thing when you can just see them putting their front legs in then scraping up the back of their tendons as they reverse out.
I was glad I had invested in giant sized xc boots last week!
Alas that frightened him and from then on we had a proper welsh anxiety shut down. 15 minutes on and we didnt look to be going over a ditch any time soon and we had one more to get schooled and were running out of hire time.
So I pulled the jockey off and told her to run back to the lorry and get the other whilst I stayed out in worked him in hand. THANKFULLY, after what seemed to be forever, he shut his eye, held his breath, and pretty much landed in my lap .... but at least he was the other side of the ditch!! From there the mental block subsided a bit and I jogged besides him over the ditch a few more times. Then called it a day. Met jockey coming over on the other one and heard given up? Nah said I, jumped it 10 times now!
So there we go, it was all going to easy - we have homework in the form of ditches!!
A little video if interested
https://youtu.be/x7pkxUD47zw
