Brilliant.<\/p>\n
The Lovely S and I got out of bed more or less on time.<\/p>\n
We did the usual stuff then left the house more or less on time.<\/p>\n
We arrived at the yard on time.<\/p>\n
I loaded the lorry.<\/p>\n
Groomed a surprisingly mud-less Vin.<\/p>\n
Put him in, gave him a haynet to munch on and we… <\/p>\n
Left the yard early (shock horror!).<\/p>\n
It didn’t rain (more shock horror!).<\/p>\n
Arrived at Allenshill way ahead of schedule (so much shock horror that it defies description!).<\/p>\n
Had a cup of tea from the excellent refreshment stand.<\/p>\n
Watched a small group of horses working-in.<\/p>\n
Walked the show jumping course.<\/p>\n
Walked around to the dressage arena and watched three tests.<\/p>\n
Got very confused because the first test we saw wasn’t the one I’d learnt!<\/p>\n
Realised that that test belonged to an earlier ‘dressage only’ class.<\/p>\n
Watched the first Prelim 18 competitor.<\/p>\n
Watched the second, just to cement the test well and truly in my head.<\/p>\n
Got confused all over again!<\/p>\n
The second competitor rode a movement that I hadn’t learnt!<\/p>\n
Dashed back to the lorry to check that I had learned the correct movements after all.<\/p>\n
I had.<\/p>\n
Yay!<\/p>\n
Got Vin out of the lorry, ran a body brush over him, tacked up.<\/p>\n
Put my show jacket on, slipped the smart silk on to my hat.<\/p>\n
Put on my riding boots and gloves.<\/p>\n
Mounted up and walked in to the warm-up arena.<\/p>\n
And began working in.<\/p>\n
Vinnie (bless) was brilliant; laid back, supple, obedient.<\/p>\n
Until, about 10 minutes away from our test…<\/p>\n
I asked for a right-lead canter.<\/p>\n
And he blew up.<\/p>\n
Minor rocking horse action accompanied by a couple of bucks.<\/p>\n
One of the other working-in combinations were so spooked by Vin spooking that the rider fell off!<\/p>\n
I didn’t.<\/p>\n
We got called forward and rode in to the arena.<\/p>\n
I felt we executed our dressage test pretty damn well.<\/p>\n
With one exception.<\/p>\n
The second canter – right lead.<\/p>\n
Yep, he had an issue with it again and let me know, again.<\/p>\n
I asked three times for the correct canter lead and three times he told me where to go.<\/p>\n
In the end I ignored the unasked-for counter canter<\/em> and just resolved to finish the test.<\/p>\n Back at the lorry we swapped tack (jumping saddle for dressage saddle).<\/p>\n And began working in: canter-work in a forward jumping position.<\/p>\n Then rode in to the jumping arena and popped the practice fences a couple of times.<\/p>\n Announced we were ready and… <\/p>\n Went for it.<\/p>\n Vinnie jumped like a star (even if the star in question had a resemblance to a stag on speed).<\/p>\n No stops, no poles down, no crookedness, no hesitation, (in fact lots of quickness of the almost too<\/em> variety).<\/p>\n I don’t know where we finished in the placings.<\/p>\n We had to leave Allenshill as soon as we’d jumped \u00e2- a prior commitment with Harry Potter.<\/p>\n But I do know that Vin was a total star.<\/p>\n We raised our Prelim 18 points by a further 20\u00a0on our last Prelim 18 outing – brilliant improvement.<\/p>\n I also know that today’s competition\u00a0filled both of us with confidence and elevated our partnership to a new level of trust and understanding.<\/p>\n I just hope that the whole thing wasn’t too boring for The Lovely S who accompanied us. Brilliant. The Lovely S and I got out of bed more or less on time. We did the usual stuff then left the house more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBrennig<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"