{"id":2293,"date":"2009-11-10T04:43:24","date_gmt":"2009-11-10T04:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2293"},"modified":"2009-11-10T04:43:24","modified_gmt":"2009-11-10T04:43:24","slug":"what-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2293","title":{"rendered":"What the…?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’m WIDE AWAKE<\/strong> at 03.15 for the second morning on the trot, and I’m fast losing the enthusiasm for editing audio at this time of the day… here’s a bunch of random things from my head. I don’t know if these thoughts will turn out to be ranty or not.<\/p>\n

Horses:<\/strong>
\nTom’s made-to-measure saddle is ready and should, hopefully, be delivered this weekend. It should have come down last weekend but we were hosting a riding club dressage competition at the yard, and that’s not an ideal environment to be testing new bits of tack.<\/p>\n

I was very surprised, given the substantial size difference between them, that Vin’s dressage and show-jumping saddles were both such a good fit for Tom. But naturally I’ll be much happier when the perfect tool for the job arrives.<\/p>\n

Tom’s ‘filled’ leg returned to normal within 24 hours and he’s been back in work since. He’s a lovely boy, has a great attitude to work and is fast winning many friends around te yard. Tom’s flatwork is now showing signs of improving – his ‘free walk’ is up in the ‘7’ area of dressage scores, whereas it used to be down in the ‘5’ zone – and overall he’s more balanced and happier on the flat.<\/p>\n

His show-jumping is tightening up too. Over the last two weeks Owen has given us some ‘control and precision’ exercises to slow things down yet keep the forward-going nature. Last night we popped round a 1m track in the indoor school, coming back to halt after every fence (except the double and treble, obv), and it not only felt comfortable and calm, it looked good in those massive mirrors too.<\/p>\n

Our cross-country work is still in the ‘could do better’ category. Tom’s an excitable chap and he’s still only going out in a snaffle Bit, but on Friday when we were hacking around the cross-country track and I popped him over a 1.10m ditch\/wall combination. The approach and take-off were very good, but on landing Tom picked himself up and hurled himself forward in to an all-out gallop.<\/p>\n

I don’t really want to change the Bit from a snaffle. I’d prefer to try education as a way of saying ‘you can only do that when I<\/strong> say so, not when you<\/strong> say so’, so I guess we’ll be spending quite a bit of time up on the cross-country track, training ourselves in when, and where, such behaviour is acceptable.<\/p>\n

I took Tom up the gallops last week. I’m guessing by his behaviour that he has never seen anything quite like a 2-mile, all-weather, go-like-greased-weasel-shit track before. It’s a safe guess – especially as he was deeply suspicious about the white post-and-rail fencing! – but within 30-metres of starting our run uphill, he had quickly settled in to the comfortable cross-country-paced gallop that I’d asked for.<\/p>\n

After about a half-mile I asked for a slower, show-jumping-canter pace and Tom obliged without any issues; we kept this pace until the last quarter-mile when I asked him to quicken again, just to see what was left in the tank. ‘Lots!’ was the answer. Tom is feeling very fit and well.<\/p>\n

But the responsiveness that he showed on the gallops is why I don’t want to muck around and change his Bit. He’s got such a soft mouth and a willing attitude that I want to keep the contact light.<\/p>\n

Vin continues to be Vin. He has his good days and his less-good days. Like Tom he’s getting worked five or six days a week, and he’s looking very good on it. But there are some days when the racehorse-logic in his head takes over and we have to confine ourselves to an hour of medium-level work in Walk and Trot, and leave the faster work alone, because it’s obvious that he would go mental if asked to canter.<\/p>\n

Even K, who is an exceptionally talented rider, has days when she can do very little with Vin. It’s as though there are parts of his brain that say ‘I can’t do that’, yet the previous day he *had* ‘done that’ and he’ll probably ‘do that’ again tomorrow.<\/p>\n

It’s very frustrating and it makes him an unpredictable ride, and that’s really not very good. Or pleasant.<\/p>\n

They are both lovely chaps to have around the place, their attitudes in the stable are exceptional – they are both such nice people to work around and with.<\/p>\n

I was going to section this post up in to the different areas of ‘Life’ but I’ve probably written enough for now.<\/p>\n

So a bunch of words on Cars, Cameras, Music, Writing (freelance and authoring) and Degree-work, Accuracy in the Media and thoughts on Other Things will all have to wait for another time.<\/p>\n

I’m off upstairs to see if my head will let me sleep for another couple of hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’m WIDE AWAKE at 03.15 for the second morning on the trot, and I’m fast losing the enthusiasm for editing audio at this time<\/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-2293","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\/2293","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=2293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}