Two hours of cross-country schooling got us somewhere, it was such a shame that the first 20 minutes were so bloody frustrating.<\/p>\n
Working Vin on the flat he showed just how much of a twat he can be. Bronking, bucking, rearing, going backwards, sideways and generally being a total twat.<\/p>\n
By the time we were ready to go for the first fence Vin was covered in sweat, as if he’d already jumped the entire track several times and finished it off with a gallop up the two-mile all-weather track.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately Vin must have left his brain back in his stable; we approached the first fence at a fair old canter – right up until one stride out from the fence, which was when he put all four of his feet in to the earth and firmly refused. Bastard.<\/p>\n
It took 20 minutes and a variety of fences before the penny dropped. You could almost see<\/em> the thought flickering alive in his head: Oh! Over them!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n From that moment the problem was the opposite, trying to hold him back, needing to stop him from flashing over them at racing speed.<\/p>\n At the end of two hours of (not continuous, plenty of breaks in between) schooling, we had it right.<\/p>\n Trakehners, Coffins, Ditch-Pallisades, Steps (big!), Drops (more big)… yep, we did them all.<\/p>\n What I think today has taught me is that Vin’s confidence is so borderline that he needs to be given a very positive ride whilst, simultaneously, being slowed to a more regular, less racing-paced speed. Speed, in his head, is King.<\/p>\n Not in my head though.<\/p>\n So all in all it was a very poor start and a very successful finish – once the penny had dropped. Or he’d got his confidence.<\/p>\n There was a faller elsewhere on the course. Twice. The same rider both times. The first time she hit the deck Vin and I acted as a mobile barrier and put ourselves between the cantering loose horse and the open gateway. The second time the gate was closed and the loose horse cantered up to its lorry and, recognising sanctuary, skidded to a halt beside the ramp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two hours of cross-country schooling got us somewhere, it was such a shame that the first 20 minutes were so bloody frustrating. Working Vin on<\/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-1271","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\/1271","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=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}