Lesson was fabulous. Started off doing some flat work getting him to move off my leg more etc. He was absolutely lazy and then suddenly he went freakin mad & started hooning off everywhere! Dick.
Warmed up doing a vertical then halting, turning back around, jumping then halting etc until he started to listen to me a little more. I will try to do this at the practice fence at competitions but think it will be a bit hard with lots of others around.
We did heaps of related lines & courses which was exactly what I needed to do. I can't believe the difference that counting out loud makes - between that and looking at the ground line its pretty hard to stuff it up. Although I still manage too its no where near as often as before.
We then worked on some doubles - two strides this time. We actually nailed these pretty quickly so was super happy with that.
The last course we did was probably round training height with one red oxer at least 1.05. I thought I would ride it like a nana but it came up really nicely and Cobs did a great jump over it (photo below).
On the last round I could really feel he was struggling as the sand was quite deep so glad we did a good round and we left it at that.
I really feel that we are the most prepared we have been to give Training a good go. I have no other goal but to finish on a happy, sound horse. If we stuff up we stuff up but I feel we need to at least give it a try. We can always go back to pre-training if its too daunting anyway :)
Wish us luck for the weekend!
