It was feeling cold when we parked the lorry up at Gatcombe this morning, riders who had got there before us said it had been snowing earlier. One or two large lorries were towed on but we drove in quick making sure we had no chance of getting stuck!Hartpury Take It 2 The Top did a fab test 31 he anticipated a transition down and trotted in the middle of his 2nd canter, my fault, he is incredibly timid to ride, if I breath in the wrong place he will try and do a downward transition!He show jumped lovely, I didn't feel his canter was as consistent as last week and consequently I allowed him to get unbalanced on the last related distance and he kicked out the front of the final fence. Very pleased with him though.
We had a dilemma whether to run him XC or not., I don't normally like to run 3 weeks running. We had intended to just dressage and show jump to gain more experience in a grass atmosphere. But we are wait listed for our next event and I was worried we only need one event to cancel and it could be over a month before he gets another run. I walked Gatcombes XC and decided that despite it being a novice track it was testing enough to warrant running him. The big, flower decorated, log into the water would be a good test for him especially with the added atmosphere as it had attracted a decent audience. Also the ground was perfect and the course looked very inviting.
He found it all pretty easy and went clear. It felt a nice easy run. Without big complex combination fences to worry about I felt he should have made the time easily, he finished very fresh and certainly can gallop fast in-between fences, but I find he still gets very unbalanced as he gallops and needs setting up a long way from the fence, thus wasting time.
Ant and I had a chat about this in the lorry on the way home and decided that maybe we haven't yet got his bitting right and also due to his size and lanky build, he is still learning to balance. So long as he is gaining experience and remains confident then I shouldn't worry. He is so much more balanced than 12 mths ago, and it's probably just a case of waiting for him to get physically stronger as he matures.
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