Was going to use today as recovery from the Tonimbuk horse trials, but now just ended up doing things at home in between showers and, off all things, riding. Took Jarrah the 23 year old out for a ride down the back. He would love to jump the Cross Country jumps I have, in his mind at least. He was never really capable when he was younger, so no chance now. I wouldn’t let him anyway J. Occy got the day off today as I rode him yesterday down the back and worked up a good sweat, so he has had 5 days on anyway.
Few branches down from the storm which I will clean up as they are blocking one of my longer tracks and one of the jumps.
Will have to see if I have time to pop down to Tonimbuk next Saturday to have a play. Good low stress opportunity really.
Heard through the grapevine that the Cross country is cancelled due to the rain overnight. Luckily the grapevine (thanks Vaughn) called me just as I was about to load up Occy back onto the float and drive back up. Another day off and too wet to do anything outside. http://www.carinyapark.com Posted via Telstra NextG email from horseoz news views and reviews
The road on the way home from Tonimbuk last night. Luckily I had just made it off the freeway before the storm hit. I got almost 120mm overnight. Hope it holds off for the cross-country today. The sound is the hail on the roof. Poor Occy in the float would have been deafened.
Got up bright and early to load up and drive to Tonimbuk. Still being dark not sure what it had to do with bright though. Quick 20 minute warm up and a nice calm dressage test followed by breakfast at 9. Photo is of Will Enzinger riding TL Vevika Posted via Telstra NextG email from horseoz news views and reviews
It’s a Saturday and I got to stay home. Bizarre that. And its sort of raining. Perfect with catching up with some of my DVD watching. I have a couple of Laura Bechtolsheimer dressage training videos from www.horsehero.com which are excellent. Both of them feature Klaus Balkenhol
Laura Bechtolsheimer works with Dan and Klaus Balkenhol
as her coach, with some very clear translation done by Dr. Bechtolsheimer. The Future Stars DVD also includes a very clear portion on Long Reining, portions of which can and should be also used for lunging a horse. Lots of transitions and changes rather than a senseless chasing of a horse in circles. It is worth getting this DVD just for this. But then again the section with Klaus Balkenhol, Laura Bechtolsheimer and the 4 year old Joey, is superb.
But my favourite DVD is the one that concentrates on Laura’s horse Dankeschoen (Dan to his friends). It is a progression of training over several months of Laura riding Dan by herself and explaining what she is doing with the warm up and exercises. This includes training for lateral movements from shoulder in to travers and renvers including required aids to help the horse. The DVD It even shows how Laura handles things when they go slightly wrong, no staged training videos here. Better this way because for most of us things don’t always go right and we need to know how to deal with those times.
And through all of this Laura just talks on, not even out of breath. Once again you get to enjoy Klaus Balkenhol coaching Laura in the section dealing with the start of piaffe, and his experience really does show here.
Apart from the quality of the riding and the coaching on these DVDs, they have some of the best sound and video quality I have seen in a long time. Can’t really wait until the next rainy day to watch them again. Both DVDs are available from www.horseheroshop.com. It stopped raining, so better get back out there and ride now Regards Walter
Having just come back from my latest successful outing with Compadre and having some spare time for a change, I thought I’d give the float a quick once over. I usually make sure the tires have air in them and nothing is about to fall off, but that is obviously not enough. Having a closer look at the tires showed some uneven wear. In fact if you have a closer look at the photo you can see some shiny bits which are the steel tread.
I’ll blame this on Bignose, sorry meant Occy as if usually parks his fat behind near that wheel. Must admit the other tires look a bit worn also so may need to go tire shopping to keep pony safe.
Our first showjumping comp in a long time and our first straight sj comp at this level. All things considered we did well getting a 4th and a 5th place. The video is of Elizabeth Hughes on Robert Henry HRCAV level 1 placed 2nd in the AM7
Been a busy few weeks since Australia Day, which was the first competition this year and the last one I have been to so far.
The Australia Day dressage comp ended up being on the grass, so the footing was a little bit firm. Occy did ok under the circumstance, even though not as active as I would have liked him. We ended up about midfield for the level 2 and in the lower third of the field for the Level 1 test. But was happy with the transitions I was getting and got some nice comments from the spectators.
Had Club Rally since then and a session with Manolo Mendez (more about him here http://www.horseoz.com/Manolo_Mendez_Articles/index.html) as well as training for an upcoming Showjumping Competition this weekend at Wyena plus trying to get Occy fit for a couple of horse trials.
I am always filling out entry forms, most of which are in a pdf format so I always needed to start afresh for every competition. Until now that is. I have just found Infix PDF Editor to make my life easier. I can now change edit and save a pdf entry form just like a normal Word document. I just have all my details and the horses details there permanently and now only need to enter the competition details. So much easier and quicker. Now back to riding.
Here are some tips to helping you achieve the pace you want to ride successfully around your next cross country course. Plan your ride, know your speed to go the distance. Now you need to work out how you will ride that average speed. As you walk the course, try to get a sense of how it will flow and feel to ride. Where will you have to ride more slowly and where can you make up time. When you are galloping your horse along you will need to let them you know that a jump is approaching.
