Some weeks you're the dog!

Well it's not been a good week horse-wise!

Poor George didn't get to do the bit we like best today. He did a good dressage, given the level of his training. Though the warm-up was interesting for being next to the cross country warm-up - he was certainly "forward" :-) In the test, he did everything in the right place at the right time. The canter transitions were rough but they happened, and all in all it was a good improvement on last time. I have no idea what the score was yet, it wasn't up when we left.

We went to the showjumping. I was concerned because it was in an arena, probably 50x50, whihc was tight enough as it was. But the course builder had not used the full size and none of the fences around the edge was put anywhere near as close to the fence as it could have been. So it was very tight, it looked very big, and the double was two strides off a 180 degree turn off the fenceline. The course was bad enough.

But we warmed up, and poor George hated the surface, absolutely hated it. It was sand/fibre, and had got far too dry. It was deep and sapping all his energy, and it was unstable. He did the cross pole a couple of times, just about OK but he didn't feel right, was reluctant to canter in but had insufficient impulsion to go from trot. Then he did a spread, and as his lead foot hit the floor he sensed the lack of support in the surface and spun violently to the left. I have no idea how I stayed on. We just about managed to get him jumping a warm-up spread relatively fluently and I took him in the ring.

It was even worse in there, completely churned up, deep and unstable. I guess we can't blame Eland. If there had been 3 weeks of rain we would have been grateful to have been on a prepared surface and not skidding about in the mud. It's not their fault we've had no rain, and they had no facility there to water the arena (I mean who thinks you need one, in the Midlands in England???).

Anyway, the poor boy tried his best. But before fence three he had already got so unbalanced and sapped of forward momentum that he had knocked number two down and so he stopped at number three. He jumped four but again ran out of oomph at five and stopped. He finished the round because I ran him at the rest to keep some impulsion of sorts, but in doing so he took another three down. So the brave boy finished, but was given a "compulsory retirement" for over 24 penalties (we had 28, one stop for 4, second stop for another 8, and 4 down at 4 each, for 16). This is a safety measure they introduced about ten years ago to stop people going cross country if the horse didn't showjump well. There is no appeal, you are not allowed to go cross country under any circumstances.

So home we came. This is what eventing is all about really. You take what you are given on the day - lumpy hillside dressage arenas, mudbath showjumping, rock hard cross country. It wasn't George's fault in any way, he tried his heart out for me - he just couldn't do it. We're going to have to take the poor boy training this coming week to restore his confidence in himself before next time.

Meanwhile I'll be very interested in the scores, because we went back and watched five horses jump. One was eliminated. One retired after a second refusal at the same two fences as George stopped at. The remaining three had eight faults each, and one of the riders looked really mad, as if she expects to get a clear round week after week. Every horse looked as if it was a real effort to jump out of that surface, and many horses seemed to be grunting when they jumped too. I don't think we can blame George, can we?

Let's hope we have more fun next time.

C.

Just to give you a laugh - this was his first attempt at the halt.



Which he corrected on request to this.



Which actually ended up as this, which is VERY difficult to achieve from such a bad start, but he knew what I wanted and offered it, good boy.