No horse makes progress the same way. There's no magic program to follow. No 'wiki-how' step by step guide. Some pick up everything easily and take everything in stride. Others need to learn lessons more than once. Still others learn quickly but don't get confident and so they need their hands held for a long time. It's one of the reasons training horses stays exciting. Each horse is different and each horse can be different on each day.
Since I've been riding Elliot, progress has been basically linear. He was not always confident in the beginning but he nevertheless took forward steps. He ran beginner novice. Then he ran novice. Then he ran training and then preliminary. We had a brief disruption when he strained a tendon and had colic surgery, but for the most part, we made 'progress'.
Last season he ran around a bunch of tough intermediates and a CIC2. AECs was the first blip on the radar. It was followed closely by the Fair Hill debacle. After a little winter down time, this season has been rocky. We got eliminated at Rocking Horse I, dropped to preliminary for Ocala II but still had a couple stops on cross country, and had a couple stops on the intermediate cross country at Rocking Horse III. Not progress.
Who really knows what caused the back slide. Was he ulcery? Was he sore somewhere? Or maybe he was weak? Did he lose confidence after carting me around all those intermediates last season? Were the holes in our training starting to show up? Or did we just lose our mojo after a silly mistake at AECs, getting foiled at Fair Hill, and then a lot of down time to stew about it? I don't really have an answer.
The plan for this season was to move up to Advanced in Florida. I wish that had happened, but it didn't. I'm sorry we have holes or lost mojo or whatever you want to call it, but I'm happy to be fixing the issues now rather than having them show up next year while we're trying to get qualified for something really big like Rolex. The horse is still very special and he's young. He's not lame. He looks great right now and he is fitter and getting stronger than ever. Maybe the setback was good. More training. More preparation. Another season of intermediate will only make him better. We can plan to move up in the fall.
Progress with horses isn't always linear. As my dad reminded me today, it isn't even always 'progress'. You just keep moving.
Since I've been riding Elliot, progress has been basically linear. He was not always confident in the beginning but he nevertheless took forward steps. He ran beginner novice. Then he ran novice. Then he ran training and then preliminary. We had a brief disruption when he strained a tendon and had colic surgery, but for the most part, we made 'progress'.
Last season he ran around a bunch of tough intermediates and a CIC2. AECs was the first blip on the radar. It was followed closely by the Fair Hill debacle. After a little winter down time, this season has been rocky. We got eliminated at Rocking Horse I, dropped to preliminary for Ocala II but still had a couple stops on cross country, and had a couple stops on the intermediate cross country at Rocking Horse III. Not progress.
Who really knows what caused the back slide. Was he ulcery? Was he sore somewhere? Or maybe he was weak? Did he lose confidence after carting me around all those intermediates last season? Were the holes in our training starting to show up? Or did we just lose our mojo after a silly mistake at AECs, getting foiled at Fair Hill, and then a lot of down time to stew about it? I don't really have an answer.
The plan for this season was to move up to Advanced in Florida. I wish that had happened, but it didn't. I'm sorry we have holes or lost mojo or whatever you want to call it, but I'm happy to be fixing the issues now rather than having them show up next year while we're trying to get qualified for something really big like Rolex. The horse is still very special and he's young. He's not lame. He looks great right now and he is fitter and getting stronger than ever. Maybe the setback was good. More training. More preparation. Another season of intermediate will only make him better. We can plan to move up in the fall.
Progress with horses isn't always linear. As my dad reminded me today, it isn't even always 'progress'. You just keep moving.
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