A lesson instead

Other Dad came down early and put us out to graze on a dry and sunny morning. Dad arrived much later after noon. By this time I was rather troubled by the horse flies and was standing by the gate, so Dad took the hint and brought me indoors into the cool. I stood by my stable with my haylage net whilst Dad attended to our beds. He gave me mints at intervals, so it was quite civilised.

He then put on my black exercise bandages, changed into breeches and boots and tacked me up in my snaffle. Our lesson with Teacher Steve was scheduled for 3.30 and he arrived about 3.15. This gave Dad an opportunity to talk through the marking of our Prelim 1 last week. In his opinion there should be some resemblance between the range of marks given for particular movements and the collectives awarded. Accordingly, if judges award on average a 5 or 6 for movements it followed naturally that the collectives should be approximately the same. The discrepancy was inappropriate. He suggested that we disregard the collectives in that particular test.

We went into the school. For the first time in ages I wore my snaffle. We practiced in walk concentrating on roundness and getting my neck longer and lower. This went well, despite having to break off periodically to swat horse flies. Teacher Steve suggested that we exercise two out of three times in the double bridle - doing some trot and canter and do a lot of walk in the snaffle until I was more consistently round. He also wanted to practice lunging at the begining of our next lesson. All told, it was quite positive and Dad took me in, untacked me and gave me my tea.

He than went down to Montgomery near Warwick to watch various horses from the yard compete in Prelim 1. These included Bonnie, Tom, Patch, Tesco, Leo, Harry and Jack. They all seemed to do very well and it was extremely competitive with our horses gaining 2nd to 6th place rosettes, so clearly some more practice in my snaffle would be a very good idea.

Dad was pleased with my work today and, after talking it through with Steve, recognised that I'm not really built to be a riding horse doing dressage and that we need to do a lot of schooling if we are to compete. Dad will keep plugging away. Such application is a very cob-like quality and to be commended.