After a good Friday night lesson with Aimee working on getting Corky more active and working through into the contact, we headed off to SNEC. We were riding prelim 14 which had lots of canter and a give and retake of the rein on a trot circle. I tried to channel David G shouting at me 'be brave' and really asked C to work forward into the bridle. He warmed up well and we used the leg yield and neck flexing we practiced with Aimee to get him to feel lighter in the hand. I was pleased with our test, instead of being quiet and backing off when he went into his outline I kicked on and asked for more. He felt really forward and uses the neck flexing to help with the give and retake (which got one of our better marks). The only downside was the movements were not as accurate as they could be and he got a bit wild in the canter. We scored 60.6% which is a standard score for us. I was a little disappointed it wasn't higher but the comments were good, 'nice active little horse, needs to relax more into the contact'. I'm happy with that as he was working much harder than usual so wasn't very relaxed!
On Sunday we headed through to Howe in Fife for the arena eventing. I was pleased with our round in the BE90 class. We took 2 poles in the SJ phase die to rushing a little but took a few more than 2 in the BE100 class! I managed to let myself get so nervous I forgot everything we had been practicing about sitting straight and quietly waiting for the jump. Rather I chased everything, was landing on the wrong canter lead and not correcting it so therefore knocked them. Watching the video I seem to only knock jumps at the end of the arena next to the spectators and none at the other! I'm disappointed that I let the nerves get he better of me, but happy that the XC phase was much better once I relaxed.
Thanks to Susan and Arron for coming to watch and filming the 100 round. One to study to remember what not to do!
Lovely photos from Dave Cameron Photography.
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