Don't get excited, I've not been yet. It's this afternoon. I'm just posting to share how excited and anxious I am to see how it goes. I won't be working him very hard, but it's our first time away from home, and in a spooky arena that he knows from before and may have some association with pain. A lot feels as if it's hanging on what happens this afternoon. First I'll be schooling Radar this morning, so check back later! About six should do it.
I'm ba-ack!
Well that went better than it might have done. Ace was spooky, but it is an extremely spooky arena with stuff stored behind wire fences, no walls, just a roof and fencing, big mirrors and windows of an office and a bungalow looking directly onto the arena. But he never felt explosive like he always used to when he was at that arena, he just looked, swerved a bit, and carried on.
He did some of his best trot yet, and we even cantered one transition on each rein to finish. I'm chuffed to bits with his progress. He's let me push him to do stuff that he wasn't mentally comfortable with without exploding. He found them physically easy, and then relaxed. He's kept his cool even though it has clearly tired him out mentally to be away from home and asked to work in a strange place.
Here is a minute of video of his most settled trot, to show you how well he is doing. The tail flick he does now is so much reduced in power and so comparatively infrequent, it was clearly a sign of pain all along. And look how straight he is, especially in that right (left as you look at it) front leg. At the moment I am still focussing on keeping him swinging through the back, so no comments on the slow tempo please, it's exactly where he and I want it.
http://youtu.be/X56TvL8yOB0
The bad news is that I haven't found a new trainer. I wasn't happy about a number of things, but taking a non urgent phone call in the middle of 45 minutes that I was paying 50 quid for was the last straw. With the arena hire, because she won't travel to me, it cost me 65 pounds didn't feel like value for money.
We are going to hire the arena a few times over the next three months, because the spooky environment is good for him, and continue the search for a trainer on our wavelength. I think we may end up travelling to Sonia again at this rate, I just can't find anyone who compares.
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Bummer about the trainer. She sounds fairly competent, although it's hard to tell if she could carry you into the upper levels. Regardless, taking a phone call and ignoring you during it is really off putting. I don't blame you for feeling cheated.
ReplyDeleteDon't know why finding a good trainer is so hard. Even here, where there are quite a few around, I ended up riding with ones who traveled over 4 hours to get here. Then, of course, we had to have a good number of riders to make the travel worth it. People would cancel out for various reasons, and in the end, the trainers stopped coming.
Ace certainly does look relaxed, happy, and loose. His trot is nicely forward and showing good scope. I like it when he takes your hand out and opens through the throatlatch. He is well on his way to developing as a really nice dressage horse....again...well, sort of again. I think this time is going to be spectacular!
I am so much more confident to get him working harder now Jean. I was so worried about how today would go, but he is feeling very different, missing all the 'is he about to explode' moments that I have felt since he was four years old. Yes he spooked, but he never for a moment felt like he would explode.
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