Friday 23 August 2013

Reviewing Posy's Progress

She has been shaking Her head over Posy's slow progress.  Although Posy seems to have developed muscles in all the right places and continually improves, albeit slowly, she doesn't show the desired head carriage very often.   She has been agonising over whether She has correctly interpreted Udo Burger's training instructions.  So, She decided to try and compare Posy with other 5 year old horses.  Rather than look at other amateurs who are probably as bad as She is, She started by looking to see what the top 5 year olds were doing.  Where better to start than looking at this year's Pavo Cup winner?

The horse's natural paces seem to have been 'enhanced' by the rider urging the horse forward whilst simultaneously leaning back and pulling its head in.  The result wouldn't look out of place in a Big Lick class.  Whilst this is doubtless temporary showing off, She did wonder what effect this would have in the longer term, so had a look at last year's winner, now in the 6 year old class.

Hmmm. She thinks Udo Burger would have said "told you so!".

Away from the mayhem of the show ring she found a video of another 5 year old in training.

This was in Denmark where it seems the Scales of Training don't apply. 

The end result of this review was that She thinks that Posy should look livelier, but at least Posy shows good rhythm and looseness, even if the contact part isn't so established.  Posy has promised to try and work through more - fearful that she, too, might have her jaws clamped shut with a tight noseband and her head hauled in to make her forelegs kick higher.

Me, I keep my head down and hope that She doesn't start comparing me with this year's Derby winner...



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