Aiming high…

I think it’s important when you’re riding and training your horse to have aims and aspirations.  I have loads of things I’d like to achieve with Fergs, and they’re not short term goals – getting to the point of doing them is going to take a lot of work – and not just on the pony!  I’d love to be able to event him – not at any height, or any success (in the sense of placings), but with the confidence that we will do a reasonable dressage and jump a double clear with some style.  Now at the level I’m aiming, we’re OK on the dressage – which is more a reflection on the low level of eventing I’m aiming at!  The showjumping isn’t wildly out of grasp, the cross country more so.  Not so much the jumps themselves, but the length of the course, the number of fences, the fitness and keeping the rhythm.  That’s something we can work on – and I’m in no rush!

So I think it’s important to set ourselves challenges and tackle difficult exercises to improve on some of those things.  Sometimes we work on stringing fences together, other times we work on grids and related distances, and sometimes we put the fences up or out to stretch our boundaries a bit.  But on this occasion, we were working on rhythm.  We were using the 20m circle exercise – with small fences at 12, 3, 6 and 9 on the clock face.

Obviously this exercise requires a lot of balance, rhythm and consistency, and our performance highlights a rather noticable lack of this in our current level of work.  Fergs wasn’t hitting the fences at a consistent take off spot and was losing rhythm at a number of points.  Now, this isn’t an easy exercise, even though the jumps are small, and I wasn’t going to make it any easier by pulling the fences out onto a larger circle.  Our field is also on a slope, and rather uneven, so hitting a good rhythm is harder than in a sand school – rather more like an xc course, or an outside grass jumping arena.  I think these are reasonable challenges, and Fergs clearly agreed as he was more than happy to help me out by adapting his take off spots to allow for our erratic stride.  This is one of his massive strong points – you really have to mess him up to make him stop!  He does his best to help you out.  (Incidentally this is the major reason I won’t compete him xc until he’s more established – I don’t want him to hurt himself by helping me out when he should really stop!)

Now what am I doing here?  I’m collecting the canter – great – but allowing him to lose impulsion – not so great.  I’m trying to keep out of his way as much as possible over the fences – good – but falling on his neck on landing – not good at all.  Getting “the” canter is something we need to work on in future.  Sorting my position (on landing particularly) out is something I’ve been trying to work on by strengthening my lower leg and core, and working on my balance – this means lots of 2-point work (you can see some on the video), and very short stirrups in my (newish Jeffries Flyover) jumping saddle.  I’m also trying to re-establish the impulsion later on during the session, by stretching out into the larger fence on the top line before bringing him back down to the circle fences – not very succesfully I might add.

This was a particularly interesting session for us, and I think I took quite a lot from it – it’s certainly informed some of our more recent sessions.  It really highlights our failings, but also some of Fergs best points – his generosity for one.  When you push a horse out of his comfort zone, and ask for something challenging, I think it’s really important to be careful – if you over do it, you risk knocking his confidence or abusing his good nature (particularly with a horse as honest as Fergs).  But that doesn’t mean that trying a new exercise, designed to test your partnership can’t be useful.  The key factors are keeping the fences small, building up to the task gradually, and most importantly, listening to your horse – if he seems stressed or unhappy with the task, it’s time to take a step back.  Never set him up to fail – his confidence and trust is the most important thing to preserve and nurture in any session, because without, your next session will be a massive step back.