I got a job offer 5km from the stables, so pretty soon I will be able to ride Flag every day.
His condition has improved immensely since he arrived at Glen Austin Stables. Look at the difference between this picture and the picture of the day we got him!!!
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| The two most important men in my life. |
I started my new job - and all I could think of was riding my boy that evening, which I did and it was awesome! :)
July-September 2010
Somewhere during July he started with his shit! One night during my lesson, he figured out that he doesn't actually HAVE TO go where I wanted him to go in the canter, and that he can make a 90 degree turn in the opposite direction at full speed. I had no steering whatsoever and couldn't stop him. Thank goodness for the end of the arena!
Pretty soon he started doing this in the trot as well and in more than one direction. It was bloody scary!!! We tried everything - someone standing in the corner he ran to, giving him a fright - at which time he will start bucking and pronking hectically and I had to cling on for dear life... and then pissing off in the opposite direction again. We had people stand by the arena's gate so he couldn't head for that (he still tried though), but the problem got worse and worse and I got more terrified of him by the minute! How I managed not to fall off still amazes me to this day!
Eventually we put Charlene back on him again as she was a more experienced rider and also much stronger with her aids - he did the same thing to her - so we decided to go back to basics... walk & trot. Trot straight lines, walk curves - no circles whatsoever and absolutely no cantering for the next couple months! This worked most of the time, but as soon as you tried to do a 20m circle he napped again.
After a couple of months we tried to do a 20m circle again - but he still napped... after a lot of experimentation we figured out that I needed to ride with the crop in my outside hand - and as soon as he tried to nap he got a big SMACK from Casper the friendly ghost, as Charlene calls it. He then realized that he was NOT winning the battle and that it was bloody sore to get smacked by something every time you turn in the opposite direction from where your mom is trying to steer you.
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| All dressed up and ready to go. |
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| Busy with our first test. |
The next day the judge held a dressage clinic at the yard - which we attended. Justin said I needed to teach him to accept the outside rein and that my reins were too loose. I had an hour lesson and I was very impressed that he only tried to nap once and managed to do a 20m circle in the end.
October 2010
About a week after the show, we decided that I should ride Flag with a crop in each hand since I unbalanced both of us by changing the crop over, and sometimes he tried to nap before I could swop the crop over to the outside to give him a smack. This seemed to work pretty well! He soon realized that there was no escape to either side and it was best just to listen to my aids and go where he was told.
