Fresh from our awful appearance at Hartpury’s JAS (show-jumping and simulated cross-country) competition last Saturday, and fully recovered from all of the aches and pains that go with being soundly dumped (though, since the bang, I have been farting up a storm on an all too regular basis!), the weekend is almost upon us, when we try it all again.<\/p>\n
On Saturday Tom and I are off to William’s for some additional show-jumping practice.<\/p>\n
On Sunday we’ll trundle up to Solihull for a crack at another of British Eventing’s JAS competitions.<\/p>\n
And, at this stage, if not as confident of success as I was before Hartpury, at least I’m not thinking this could be another disaster.<\/p>\n
So what’s changed to instil the confidence?<\/p>\n
The Bit.<\/p>\n
I’ve reconfigured Tom’s bridle with the Snaffle piece, removing the nathe French Gag I tried at Hartpury.<\/p>\n
I might be proved wrong in my logic, but after thinking long and hard about what went wrong, and after talking to a couple of very learned people, it’s entirely possible that Tom is such a sensitive soul (!) that the way the French Gag works could have upset him, even a Happy Mouth nathe gag.<\/p>\n
The change back to the Snaffle will sacrifice a large portion of braking for forward-goingness, but at this stage of the game I want Tom jumping forward and freely and without being sensitive in his mouth.<\/p>\n
I want to educate Tom not to tank off with me, rather than muck about with gadgets.\u00c2\u00a0 I realise that education is a longer-term objective, but I think implementing a quick fix will only bring more problems, not fewer. Although I will add in mitigation, I do know I need to use a Bit with a little more edge for the cross-country phase – a Snaffle isn’t going to cut it!<\/p>\n
Anyway, Saturday is the ideal time to try my ‘back to square one’ plan and see how it pans out, William will, I know, test the pair of us quite hard.<\/p>\n
Sunday is the time to make it all work ‘on the day’. At least we’ll be well ‘jumped in’ after Saturday!<\/p>\n
We schooled on Tuesday evening and Tom felt fine; a little forward (keen!) but nicely balanced on his turns and working really well in to his transitions.<\/p>\n
Didn’t ride last night, by the time I got home from work I was so ridiculously tired that we had a quick tea and were in bed by 9pm.<\/p>\n
I’m going to make every effort to ride today. I would like a crack over the show-jumps in the outdoor arena if I can get my act together, otherwise we’ll have to jump indoors – though going by the weather forecast, jumping indoors might keep our bottoms dry; jumping outdoors probably won’t!<\/p>\n
So that’s this weekend.<\/p>\n
Next weekend we’re back at Allenshill for another Eventer Challenge; the following weekend we’re cross-country schooling at home.<\/p>\n
Four weeks after that it’s our first BE Intro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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