Lockdown 3 or 4 I’ve lost count !

Back to lockdown = back to home training!

Timone and Pumba are turning 4 and we’re now ready to get cracking. I have been working hard on the flat, getting them ready for their first shows. Hopefully competitions will kick off in April. This gives me just over a month to get them jumping round a course. I better get a wiggle on! 

The other horses have done very little jumping, my main focus has been practicing my flat work. I have been lucky to have training from Martin Greet. We have been working on History’s suppleness and collection. Lots of lateral work, including shoulders in and quarters in. For the collection we have been doing a lot of gear changes moving up and down within the canter. 

Jabrun struggles on self carriage, he has so much power and most of the time he doesn’t know what to do with it. He ends up out of balance and wants me to carry him. So again gear changes has been useful for him. When he gets heavy in the hand I use a little bit of shoulder fore and close the gait down until he carries himself, then I move him back up again into more of a working trot or canter.  We also do a lot of work on transitions with him as this helps him to carry the weight more on the hind leg. 

Elsa is coming along in leaps and bounds so we have decided to rest her and pick her back up towards the show dates. 

During the lockdown I had a little assignment with aase camp which gave me some fantastic pole work exercises to practice, I will attach the link here (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbgAsoR4tc), some of you may find it super useful like I have.

These exercises are more difficult than they look but really good to help fine tune some aids and also get the horses listening to you. 

Apart from all the work with the horses I have also teamed up with VIP-Equestian. This is very exciting for me and I’m so proud to be a part of their team, I have been looking for a thin pad to go under my saddles to give the horses an extra bit of protection and I’m so glad I came across these pads. They are brilliant, nice and thin so fit perfectly under my CWD saddles. 

They really are the best pad I have found! 

For more information look on www.vip-equestrian.com 

Well roll on April and hopefully the start of a good show season. I’m hoping my hard work shows in my results 

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