A number of personnel promoted.
Everybody has been promoted!
Tia has been promoted from needing a martingale for her canter work. Today she did a couple of walk to canters which were really quite nice.
Jazz has been promoted from having L plates to hack out. He is perfectly well behaved on the road now so we just don’t need them. He occasionally suggests that we have gone far enough but it has now reduced to a twitch of the head. We went out for 40 minutes in a pretty high wind. He is lovely to ride and also much fitter than he was. He was also dead sound.
When we got back he had scrubbed his feet clean on the wet road so I took a look at them. I found a small deep brown bruise on the outside heel wall of the foot he has been obviously lame on. And right where the stone was that I removed from his foot. But interestingly, I also found either a puncture wound or an abscess exit hole (I think the latter, positioning and too round for something he trod on unless it was a big nail), perfectly circular 1/8th inch in diameter, next to the white line in the diagonally opposite rear foot. That may explain why he occasionally looked lame in all four feet, and also why he was so desperately lame on the first day. Perhaps we have accused him of being a total wimp mistakenly – he may have been left without a foot to stand on on one diagonal, poor boy :-( I have apologised!
Zip has been promoted to being a real horse and wearing a bridle. I can’t say he was impressed! It went on easily enough (he can’t yet get his head high enough to stop me reaching his ears, but he tried :- ) He was very mouthy with the bit (a 4.5 inch French link) . He then proceeded to spend five minutes walking backwards around the box in tiny circles trying to leave the bit behind. It was very funny to watch even if he wasn’t that happy about it :- ) Sorry Zip, didn’t mean to laugh at you ….
I’m finding already, since Zip arrived, that I have almost no interest in competing Tia this year. I don’t compete just for the sake of it, I do it to see the improvement in the horse as well as to get out for the day and to have the thrill of cross country. But now I have Jazz and Zip to work on, albeit maybe not to affiliated standard until Jazz gets his act together. I am so much more interested in spending my time doing them than I am in doing the same with her as I did last year. It feels as though I would only be training Tia to do Pre-novice to make her worth more, and I’d just rather spend that time on Jazz. Affiliation fees are serious money, and as I sit at the moment I am not planning to affiliate Tia for this year, but we’ll see how Jazz comes along before March/April.
C
posted by cptrayes @ 7:26 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Isn't it amazing how ta-a-a-a-ll-l-l they can get when you try to bridles them? And then, that awful bit is just in the way...Tucker, who has been under saddle for over three years still stands on the cross ties while the bit is in his mouth and makes all kinds of silly, lip flippy faces.
Poor Jazz. If your assessment is right, he must have been really sore after all.
The lady is a smart cookie. Now that she has figured out how to canter, it's a piece of cake. Congratulations.
I understand about the competition. Fees here are pretty exhorbitant too, even for the smaller shows. We do have a lot of options as to levels of shows, but I think many of the smaller combined training events are no longer around. Used to be there were all kinds of schooling ones with low entry fees.
Just two classes at a recognized dressage show, with all the associated fees costs over $120 And you need membership in at least one of the national organizations or you have to pay another supplemental fee. Hope I can save enough money to compete this summer.
Kenny Harlow teaches the horses to lower their heads for bridling. Most of the time, Tucker remembers. At 16.3, or maybe 17h...I haven't measured him on a completely level surface as my barn floor has a bit of a slope--reaching up to bridle him is not an easy task. It makes me adore Toby who drops his head and opens his mouth for the bit.
That's the trouble here too Jean. British Eventing started lower height classes and the availability of cheap little local unaffiliated competitions has just plummeted until now I find it impossible to train a horse without affiliating :-(
Tetley used to just open his mouth and practically put his head into the bridle :-) I wonder how he is? I have a catch 22 now. Charlotte has not kept in touch and I am scared to phone her in case she tells me that he is unsound, or that she doesn't like him, or that something unforeseen has happened which will affect his future. So I sit wondering how he is rather than potentially hear bad news.
C.
Well .... I wouldn't exactly call it a piece of cake :-) She needs a lot of setting up, and she always offers one or two horrible efforts before she cottons on. It'll be a few more weeks before I'd let a stranger try it, but compared with the way she was chucking herself around just a month ago, she's certainly getting on really well and she's a very good girl :-)
C
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