There is nothing like taking a couple of babies to their first recognized horse trial……
to discover the holes in their training.
I didn’t have much in the way of expectations……
Bad Eventer afterall…..
My goals for the weekend were VERY straight forward.
#1 Keep the horse between me and the ground.
#2 Stay INSIDE the dressage arena.
Seriously. That was it.
Anything over those goals…… such as completing the show with a number…….. was WAY MORE than I was worried about.
But.
To be honest.
It became clear early on………
that my goals, however reasonable…….. may have been a bit
LOFTY.
I managed to stay on top by some miracle thanks to William Fox-Pitt & his neck straps!!
yes, yes…….just call me VELCRO!!
After spinning in circles on Baby Seabiscuit,
not to mention the BLACK EYE he gave me in warm up……..
And the bucking melt down by TheSerialKiller…….. I decided it was time to
START OVER.
I start my home bred babies with the most fundamental basics……
and they are very solid citizens.
our homebred 4 year old (For Sale)
but I had acquired both the TB babies already under saddle. Soooooooo……. I made some assumptions about their base of training…….. and went straight to the FUN STUFF!
……..we all know that whole ASS-U-ME thing……
So after the epic Bad Eventer-ness at the show…….
I decided I better start from ZERO…… and find out what’s missing…….
It didn’t take more than a few minutes to find some GIANT holes in their basics…….
For example:
Baby Seabiscuit won’t let you do ANYTHING on his right side. And I mean NOTHING.
Stand on his right, and do something as small as scratch your head…….he launches into orbit!
Which explains why he SPINS TO THE LEFT every single time he’s spooking at something he’s seeing on his right……
Right side issues…….well duh…….I can fix that……
So it’s back to SQUARE ONE…….we’ll be playing with the toys for awhile until we get the holes solidly filled in.
Bad Eventer strikes again…………………..