Took Monty to Merrist Wood yesterday to hire out the indoor school and he was superb. Really chuffed with him. He is really mastering the lateral work in trot and we can now get perfectly respectable travers, renvers, leg yield, shoulder in and even half pass is coming along. He was powering around and felt so impressive - looked fab in the mirrors too. Canter lateral work he still doesn't seem to get, he doesn't move off my leg aid and just gets tight and tense. In fact generally I would go back to now saying his canter work is weaker than his trot work again. Funny how things swap and change. He did do some lovely counter canter and CC to trot transitions though. Just really need to build that strength behind in the canter.
So, we toddled off to Fairoak Grange today for some BD. Was looking forward to it as feel he is coming on so well at the moment. He warmed up beautifully which is generally a bad sign. If he's too soft and relaxed at the beginning of a warmup it generally means he'll be half asleep in the test itself! True to form he was behind my leg in the first test - N27 in the indoor arena. The test suits him well as it's busy and he was obedient but not taking me forwards as well as he could. Just scraped a qualifying score so 3 more points towards Regionals qualification. There were a lot of good bits which have improved - was very pleased with his two 1/2 10m circles in trot and his canter to trot after the diagonal and also his G&R in canter which is funny to think that 18mths ago he couldn't do that without impersonating a giraffe. His medium trots weren't so good though and only got 6 and 5 and he dropped me big style into the final halt and landed on his shoulders. Whole test was a mix of 6's and 7's. Collectives 7667. 65.71% Comments about needing to be more in front of the leg but willing and obedient. He was only 1 mark behind 2nd place but 3.5% behind 1st place so still lots of work to be done.
Took him back to the box for 25mins and then back on for a quick warmup and attempt to get him more in front of my leg for 2nd test but he was well and truly asleep by this point. He is just so flipping laid back he's nearly horizontal! His canter was well behind my leg to the point where he started nodding his head and I couldn't wake him up. He woke up a bit in the arena as it's quite exposed on top of a hill with some horses grazing in the field next door but it wasn't enough. He got an 8 for his first centre line but it was downhill after that (literally) - he dropped me in several transitions and cantered in his medium trot getting us a 4 for that movement. Encouragingly he did manage a 7 for his other medium trot though which is real progress. Collectives 7667. Judge: Pat Watts. Annoyingly finished just short of a qualifying mark on 64.52% and again was 1 mark behind 2nd place but 4.5% behind 1st. Usual comments about needing to be more supple and work more through from behind.
So, 3 more points towards regionals means we've got 11 now I think and he now has a total of 42 BD points. Need to think about if I want to qualify him for Prelim Regionals as needs to have under 49 proper points and I need another 5 Prelim points to qualify so need another outing at Prelim before I do any more Novice or do I concentrate on getting the results at Novice. Realistically he probably won't come anywhere in either class at Regionals level so wondering whether to bother or just concentrate on Petplans again next year as doing Regionals at Novice will stop us doing Petplans. Decisions!
Off to Larkhill tomorrow - staying away for the night and competing on Sunday in our last BE90 of the season. Assuming it goes ahead given forecast of rain, rain and more rain!
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