Sunday, February 20, 2011

Hunua HT 20 February 2011



Yay, another HT on the wee pony.

Didn't have a particularly good start with a pretty poor dressage.
He actually warmed up really nicely, being soft and round almost straight away. Unfortunately however, the ring was running somewhat late and I overcooked him. By the time we got to do our test, he was feeling very heavy and I simply couldn't get his front end up.

He was very obedient and well behaved through out his test, but afterwards I did have a bit of a joke to everyone about exactly how many times the judge would give comments on either his being overbent, or behind the vertical.

However, even I didnt expect it to be mentioned for almost every movement (including the free walk which does somewhat astound me, as it was one of the movements where he wasnt)...and the grand total is......ta dahhh....TEN...the word overbent is mentioned TEN times in my test sheet.

Needless to say, the overall score was one rather forgotten.

Next time I plan to allow very little warm up, probably better with skedaddles than overbent?



Onto the show jumping.
Looked to be a nice course, with I have to say, nothing that made me feel in the least bit anxious. Again making me wonder if it was up to height (as I have done at all of the Training HT's I have done on him).

However, he did indeed react to the martingale. Approaching the first jump he went to tootle off, threw his head up, and was rather annoyed to find that avenue closed off to him. Resulted in taking the rail at the first jump. After a couple more jumps he settled again and resigned himself to listening: he gave me a lovely ride around the rest of the course, making it all feel rather easy.

Next day was XC day, and having walked the course, again there was nothing of even the slightest concern, apart from getting him to cross the river (not flagged).

He knew what was coming, and although I attempted to warm up I gave up having almost catapaulted into others trying to warm up. I did trot him over one practice jump, but he was fine, focussed on it immediately so I knew I didnt have to worry about the jumping side of it.

Left the start box rather (VERY) slowly and cruised around the course. It did take a wee while to convince him to cross the river, but he obliged. Basically he just popped over everything I pointed him at and again gave me a lovely ride with no concerns whatsoever.

Although I did find it amusing that having completed our XC, I actually had to get off and lead him as every time something happened he did huge skeddadles....ummm obviously a little fitter than required.




So the wee pony has now completed two pre trainings, and five trainings with no stops on either show jumping or XC phases.

VERY excited at stepping him up to pre novice at Rotorua.

However......as can be seen by my splatter at a show jumping clinic just days before Rotorua, that wasnt to be. He was also WD from Puhinui as although I had a rider for him, he was still a little sore after the fall.

next outing, then: Woodhill.....he is entered PN, but with my own confidence flagging after the fall, I may well drop him to training to get ME back on track, and aim at starting him at Kihikihi.

SOOO frustrated.....just when I really felt it was all coming together....oh well, onwards and upwards.

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