The up's and down's of competing (by down I mean hitting the deck)

OwnedbyChanter

OwnedbyChanter

With out my boys life would be bland
Apr 16, 2009
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Raininghamshire
Today was amazing.

This morning Ginger and I went off on our own for a spot of our favourite thing, dressage:)

We did a prelim 13 and novice 28. The warm up was lovely but as always I did him fall off in the arena and he dropped off my leg aids :( but no bucks and his trot was lovely.

I have never done Novice 28 with before and only learnt it the night before but the minute he entered I just knew he would be great and he felt it. Huge smiles all round.

We won the prelim 67. 92% and got a huge 70.42% in the novice. What a star. Finally our first win at dressage.

I spoke to the judge after and she was just gushing out ginger saying what a lovely partnership we make and you can see how much I adore him. Plus he was horse she would love to have taken home that day.

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The on to a SJ lesson. The jumps are getting bigger and we need to get braver. First time jumping on grass and it was scary the pace we needed to clear some of them. Ginger has a tiny collected canter and I had to really push on out of my comfort zone to make some of the distances.

This is the wall in the middle of the combination (not me jumping)

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Unfortunately after the wall there was another large upright then a dog leg turn to planks. I didn't make the planks and had fall. opps. he spooked at them and I did not control the turn enough to make it. Straight up and vertical down to my feet.

Straight back on and over we went again clear this time.

Huge smile and amazing weekend of riding my truly fantastic ginger pony.

Now sat with a glass of wine and an ice pack on my ankle (yeap is was the same one I broke 2 years ago)
 
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Reactions: newforest, Fleabitten Grey, juliecwuk and 8 others
Fantastic about the dressage, good about the jumping apart from the falling off bit. Hope the wine numbs the pain!
 
Congratulations on your dressage win - well deserved I think! Hope your ankle is ok. That wall looks very scary!
 
well done on your win. I'm hoping to get back out competing in the next few weeks as well. Sorry to hear you hurt your ankle jumping. Fingers crossed it's nothing too major.
 
Only just seen this. Well done on the win - feels good doesn't it :) I think you're doing great with the jumping considering it's not your "thing" and the horse is green but you are both looking more confident over fences than in the earlier photos so clearly things are starting to come together!
I know what you mean about the canter and distances as I have the same trouble with Annie. I'm used to jumping Jam who has a big ground-eating stride and makes distances so easily, compared to Annie whose canter doesn't naturally cover the ground and I have to push her on and ride every stride. We've done a lot of work on the flat to make her canter more forward, and plenty of pole and grid work. When we started jumping doubles and related distances we were always needing to do an extra stride but now that we're both much more confident she is finding it easier to cover the distance. As you and him get more confident over fences you will find it easier to ride him on. You can work on it at home with ground poles set X number of canter strides apart and see if you can take a stride out (e.g. place them at a 6-stride distance and try to canter them in 5) - you probably do this sort of thing anyway for dressage, but in this case it's useful for jumping too as it's the same principle but without the added complication of having an obstacle to get over.
 
@joosie thank you. My RI is constantly telling me to push him on so is my dressage RI he really struggles in the school to get that bigger canter.

My RI always starts with the poles and i am the only one that can get the max number in but not the shortest lol.

We need to crack it as this is needed for the higher novice tests as well.

I am relaxing more and he is such a star i don't think we will ever do higher than 90 and i am happy with that.

I would love your confidence.
 
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