It’s been a good week, and relatively quiet with clients’ horses compared to last week. I just had a loading and a pony that is spooky with jump fillers. Plus I have had my regular clients that I teach from home.
Lolly, the new pony, has a new registered name, which I will tell you about and explain how I arrived at it, once I have received the confirmation from British Showjumping. She has settled in really well and we took her to a local equestrian centre (Finchingfield) for a training show. It’s a great set up - they have a full course of fences out and they put the heights up and down according to what is needed. I could then go in the ring and train William as he was going round - brilliant! It is so useful to have the atmosphere of a show and be able to train at the same time; I think we'll be going there a lot. We also took Nibbs and they are really starting to get it together.
With Trevor we are still working a lot on control, so I set up an exercise where William had to ride him between two poles on a fence (see the picture below left) then stop at the fence, take up and maintain a contact, then with his legs gently tap Trevor’s sides. At first Trevor wanted to go forwards but the contact from the bit stopped him. William had to keep repeating what he wanted until Trevor worked out that we wanted him to back-up, the poles were there to guide him and help him move backwards in a straight line.
Once Trevor could do this and was backed out I got William to go either left or right by opening the relevant hand and asking Trevor to do a 
walk to canter transition. These are still a bit ropey and will be until William learns to sit on his bum and use his legs, he has a tendency to tip forward. Then once in canter, I have been getting him to move Trevor out onto the circle using his inside rein on the neck moving the pony through his shoulder, then asking him to slow down through the paces using his outside rein. I am doing this to get William out of the habit of entering into a pulling match with Trevor which is when he decides to run through the bridle. Now William will have some tools to use to counteract the behaviour. It definitely seems to be working and Trevor is starting to listen. 85% of the time Trevor is great, but he is a strong pony and if he wants to bugger off, he does.
Well our plans to go to the Blue Chip Championships have been aborted. We sent all our stuff online to let them know we had qualified, we knew the schedules were due to be sent out, but they never arrived so we entered the info' again, and sent an email. A week later still no joy and I knew that other people had received theirs as Alice had hers for my horse Jo. So as a last resort we called the show secretary. To say she made us feel a total pain in the ass was an understatement.... So Sam whizzed off an email to say that we would no longer be entering the show. The diesel and entry fees trying to qualify for these things are huge, and to be spoken to in that way is unacceptable, no matter how busy they are! I know one entry won’t make a difference. William however is gutted... and next year we won’t be entering any Blue Chip qualifiers with either ponies or horses.
Sam and I have our birthdays in March, and one of our liveries, Lisa, has bought us tickets to see War Horse at the National Theatre. We can’t wait, although I have been told to take a big box of tissues, and I am not ashamed to say that I will probably shed a tear or two.
This week I have a four day trip away from home. On Monday I will be in Oxfordshire with a just cut yearling, Tuesday morning I am in Bristol with a dressage horse, then Malvern in the afternoon with a horse that is not accepting the saddle. Finally I visit Exeter on Wednesday for a loading problem and Kent on Thursday for a morning of ground work training. By Friday I shall be looking forward to a lie in before the weekend shows and teaching start.