Good news for Zippy lovers
After yesterday, when frankly it was laughable how appalling Jazz was, we've had a rethink. I can't quite work out now why I didn't drop Jazz to a trot and pootle round like a snail. I think he'd have been much happier to do that, only it never occurred to me. He has trained so well at a metre, that what happened was SO surprising it quite blew both SH and I apart!! Anyway, it's obvious that we are wasting our time training Jazz any more. He trains fine, even brilliantly. His last spin around the farm ride was so confident it's impossible to recognise yesterday as being the same horse!!! What blows him apart is competition, so he needs to go and do competition. The new plan is as follows:
- compete George at PN. If he goes well at Catton this weekend then he is "cooked" and does not need regular training sessions away from home. He's a horse who retains his training and even improves without it :-) We will school flatwork at home and compete at every PN within 2 hours travel distance.
- stop training Jazz and enter local Combined Training competitions. He has one June 25th. Try a tiny local ODE on July 6th and trot the cross country this time! If he does that, enter for Stafford 80cm class and trot that too! Build his confidence in a competition situation and "see what happens" for the next couple of years. I have the time to wait and see what he turns into. And if it's a dressage horse only, so be it, he can't help it, and I love him!
- start training Zippy. I hear the Zippy fans cheering :-) Zippy will go to the farm ride tomorrow, as long as it is not pouring with rain in the morning, and we'll see what he's made of.
Well it certainly feels like a plan full of fun to me, what about you?
C
ps I have something interesting to report on the problem Jazz has with sunshine through trees when travelling in the lorry. Yesterday I put a fly mask on him to shade his eyes and he was almost frantic. It made him much, much more worried than the sunshine alone, and I can only guess that the lattice of the material made the vision disturbance even worse. It was worth a try. If it wasn't totally unsafe, I'd take the bars off the windows and see what happens then, because now I think it may be them as much as the trees.
posted by cptrayes @ 7:47 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
re jazz - might it then be better to black out the window altogether?
I can't do that without also cutting out the air, because the window would have to be shut. That's not practical in summer, when the sunshine is around to cause the problems :-(
C
It's always easy to figure out what you SHOULD have done the day after. The mind doesn't always hit the solution in the heat of things.
I should think the plan will work beautifully. Without the pressure to do well on Jazz, you can take your time and give him the opportunity to decide whether he is an event horse or a dressage master. Glad to know you have a lot of smaller, local events to compete in. They are scarce around here nowadays.
As for Zip, sounds good. Hope the weather holds. I am really looking forward to how he will do on the cross country.
H-m-m-m-m, the Jazz sunlight issue is a puzzle. Race horse blinkers to block out the side light? He could still see, but not the passing sunlight? Poor kid. Maybe it makes him dizzy!
I can get dressage and showjumping almost every weekend, Jean. I live in the centre of the horse universe in Cheshire in England :-) Cross country is a problem, and a One Day Event extremely rare.
Zippy and I will hopefully be popping all the little 1ft- 2ft high jumps on the farm ride. We'll see !!
C
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