{"id":3108,"date":"2010-04-19T10:49:13","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T09:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=3108"},"modified":"2010-04-20T19:34:51","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T18:34:51","slug":"hot-horsey-and-lazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=3108","title":{"rendered":"Hot, horsey and lazy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday:<\/strong>
\nOn Saturday I drove Tom to Aston-le-Walls which is in Northants (but only just, it’s a few miles from Banbury), to take part in an Intro level one-day Event.<\/p>\n

This was Tom’s first competitive run with Sammi onboard – Sammi has been schooling Tom all week, trying to get things straightened out – and we wanted to see how he would go in a competitive environment.<\/p>\n

As well as the schooling, we have also had a tack change. We have decided to stick with the snaffle Bit for flatwork, and use the Cheltenham Gag Bit for both jumping phases.<\/p>\n

We have augmented these changes by abandoning the Grackle noseband and, instead, using a Flash noseband for all three phases (dressage, show-jumping and cross-country).<\/p>\n

I realise this is esoteric stuff to non-equestrians, but believe me, these pieces of fine-tuning are critical to the horse’s comfort and well-being because, just as you can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink, you can’t make a horse perform well if it is unhappy with its tack.<\/p>\n

Tom’s dressage continues to improve (fortunately it was the same test as his last two Events), and he scored only 36.5 penalties which is brilliant. I think his true dressage potential is around the 32-34 penalty zone, but it’ll take a bit more effort to get down there.<\/p>\n

In the show-jumping Tom had a fence down which, as the video shows, occurred because he was too keen in to the corner, and he was unbalanced and rushing out of the turn.<\/p>\n

In the cross-country phase Tom showed everyone what it was all about.<\/p>\n

He came out of the start box at a fair pace (keen to travel sidways at one point), and maintained that speed for most of the course.<\/p>\n

Sammi allowed him to open the throttle a little on the final 3rd of the track.<\/p>\n

Tom’s dressage video is below. If you think discussions about nosebands, Bits and other pieces of tack is esoteric, stay away from dressage videos!
\n<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

A bit pacier and racier than the dressage, this is Tom’s show-jumping round:
\n<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

This is the start of Tom’s cross-country:
\n<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

And this is the last 2\/3rds of the cross-country, and the point where Tom is allowed to get a shift on:
\n<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

The bottom line for Tom’s day is that despite rolling a pole in the show-jumping, clever Tom finished 12th out of 34 finishers. He completed the cross-country in 3m 50s against an optimum time of 3m 55s, which is brilliant.<\/p>\n

I got caught by the sun and Sammi and Jess (who groomed for Sammi) spent far too much time taking the pee out of me.<\/p>\n

After Tom had finished, and during a moment of mental inattention, Jess allowed Tom to tread on her foot.<\/p>\n

As Tom is a) very big, b) very heavy and was c) wearing studs in his shoes, I was desperately concerned for her wellbeing.<\/p>\n

However she reassured me that he hadn’t caught her foot and had just trodden on the side of her wellie.<\/p>\n

Several hours later I had a text from Sammi to say that Jess was in hospital having a piece of her toe removed.<\/p>\n

I felt – and still feel – very bad about this.<\/p>\n

Sunday:<\/strong>
\nEveryone had the day off. Well, when I say everyone, I mean Sophie, Tom and I had the day off. Poor Sammi had to work at the yard (and she’d competed three horses at Aston-le-Walls on the previous day!).<\/p>\n

We got up in the afternoon, we got showered and dressed in the early evening and we got back in to bed not many hours later.<\/p>\n

During the course of the afternoon\/evening I did a huge load of admin and, as a direct result, spent several hours feeling very smug.<\/p>\n

And that, my friends, was my weekend; hot, horsey and lazy – as promised.<\/p>\n

How was yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday: On Saturday I drove Tom to Aston-le-Walls which is in Northants (but only just, it’s a few miles from Banbury), to take part in<\/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-3108","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\/3108","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=3108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}