Oh boy- decisions, performances and some seriously cold weather!

Ah...Perfect blogging weather.  But not so perfect for anything else!. Today is a toasty -15 degrees, and the arena surface is frozen-the indoor surface that is!. The tractor will not start, so we wait for some men to come and rescue the tractor, and for the sun to come up enough that the arena hopefully thaws out so we may be able to ride. 

The temperature inside the stables

The door handle inside the stables

The view out the arena windows

This cold snap came quite late this winter, and sadly the wildlife seems to be suffering. The frozen moat around the stables is littered by little dead birds under the surrounding trees, with many confused as it appeared winter was over a few weeks ago  when the days became longer and the bulbs began to break through the earth. 

Despite the ‘great’ weather, things continue to go ahead. Potifar is going extremely well at the moment. Over the winter period I have been on myself to improve our weaknesses, or more correctly my own. I have not been so honest on myself for quite some time with regards to having Pot correctly on two reins. I felt it mostly to the right, and movements from that direction where suffering as a result. Since this awakening, I have been doing thousands of transitions and straight lines, and checking my ability to vary and maintain tempos as I found that once we were on two reins, the brakes suffered a little. We practice voice commands to slow down or halt, with the goal to fine tune the whole communication system. All I can say is that this has been a valuable few months as Pot is feeling great, with more movement than ever, greater control in tempo and precision of the movements, and a better overall feeling. I never do a lot of competing with him over the winter. Instead I  like to train and work through issues so that when spring comes around, we are ready to go. This works for us, so I continue with the same plan that has worked in the past few years. We will begin a few Grand Prix’s over the coming weeks to test out our new tools, and then go to the CDI’s.

Whilst Poti has been training, Sandro Boy has begun his learning curve in the Big Tour. This is only the second horse I have debuted at Big Tour, and it is a great sense of achievement, but it is a lot of pressure. Sandro Boy learnt the Grand Prix from June 2011, and as a 10 year old Stallion, this was a lot to take on. He has a brilliant attitude, which made this all possible, but we wanted to take our time with him as he has a lot of talent that I do not want to jeopardize. We began with a National show in Ankum, the home of the prestigious PSI auction, and placed in both competitions, third and fourth to be exact. Although there were moments of brilliance, communication errors cost us many points, with  Sandro Boy not yet clear on what each aid meant. Then came Munster, and although the score was not what we had planned, we learnt a lot as I have always said you learn more from when things go wrong. I created a fantastic passage- it was big, collected, and full of power- but he is not established at this and I treated the poor boy like an experienced Grand Prix horse and just gave him an aid like a would Pot for piaffe. Poor ‘Nissa’ as he is known in the stables had no idea what I wanted, and missed 2 out of 3 piaffe’s. This was totally my fault for forgetting his inexperience, and the next day we took him back into the arena to check his confidence and thankfully all was good.

Sandro Boy gets applause from his Mum

This past weekend saw major progress. Nissa finished in 3rd place behind Patrik and Belli Balkenhol with 68%. Nissa went through the test with confidence and focus. When we are able to ease the handbrake off he was amazing, scoring countless 8’s and some 9’s. The following day was the Kur, and we do not have one yet for Sandro Boy. we opted for Toys music, and off we went. Nissa really impressed me with his ability to adapt and listen throughout the test. Toy has very good at piaffe,  so much so that you really just sit there and he keeps the tempo and rhythm for as long as you wish. So needless to say, the piaffe segments are long in this test, and I was worried how Nissa would cope. Well cope he did, and was even awarded some 8’s for his piaffe. He sailed through the test, and I could not have been happier with the feeling and progress made at such an early stage of his career. We finished on 75.5%!!! Second!!!. I know what I can achieve with Nissa when all is established, but to achieve a personal best in Kur was pretty exciting at only his first attempt. The ladies in the audience called him a ‘traum pferde’ which means dream horse.. and to me he is. We will now take him to a Grand Prix this weekend, and decide from there if we try for our MES’s before the end of the month or not. It is all now very much up in the air, but if he is not ready then he is not ready, and I am quite sure Poti will do his best to keep the stable order as it stands as he is very confident and self assured in his own ability at the moment.  

For those people who regularly read my blog, you will be happy to know it appears Australia may just be having team tails and jackets for the London Games, with all disciplines now interested in the idea of presenting as a unified team. Once all is confirmed, I will show you the design, but personally, I think it is great!. 

Biggest tip I have learnt this past month?- Basics Basics Basics.... I have written this before but I can not stress it enough. We are all, including yours truly, so obsessed with doing every movement as it is the test, that we do not spend enough time ensuring the basics are good enough to begin with.. Ask yourself.. Are they on both reins? Do they respond to a light leg or hand aid? Can you ride a nice straight centre line? Can you dictate the tempo? Can you ride the frame where you need it to be? Can you make the simplest transition from walk to trot or visa versa seem seamless?. These fundamentals are what stop us from getting better marks, and what all those top riders we aspire to ride like live for. And once you start focusing on this, it often will get worse before it gets better as you are changing your basic way of training and the horses will not fully understand at first. Take it slowly, perhaps playing with the walk and doing more collected walk to medium walk, with transitions to halt, all the time questioning yourself is he straight?,did he stay on the contact? can I maintain the tempo I choose?. Sounds boring, but sometimes this is all I do, and I am so glad I do as my horses feel better than ever!. My general training plan is 15 minutes walk, 20 minute warm up beginning with stretching and towards the end of that time incorporating more transitions and tempo changes. Then this is continued on with the frame moving to a more ‘competition’ frame where we begin preparing for the movements, and not necessarily committing to the movement itself. For instance, a half pass, we start from the corner in shoulder in, ensuring we have the tempo the angle, the feeling they are not anticipating, that we can give the rein and the horses do not anticipate the half pass.. If all this is good, then we can do a half pass, but the first few are not the angle as in the test. Instead they are longer, focusing on swing, angle and the overall ease of the movement. We ‘train’ for probably 20 minutes, and then begin the cool down. This is only a general plan, and is a plan we use for the the Grand Prix horses. This is not set in stone as you have to adapt to each horse, and no two horses are the same!. 

Good luck to all competing over the coming weekends. A special mention has to go to Feramo, our horse trained now by Judy Dierks, starting in only his second ever Inter 11, and first in Australia. He is a perfect example of what patience, determination and one awesome support crew can achieve. After breaking his pedal bone in a freak accident while chilling in his  stable, we were not sure this day would ever happen!. A lot of rehab, a trip home to Australia, and an awesome effort by all involved with Feramo has seen this day come!. Go Rami!.

Now off to see if i can ride before I get cabin fever!.:)

The frozen moat