We are delighted to host Sally Cousins as our newest guest blogger, as she shares her wealth of knowledge with us in the form of weekly training tips. We hope these nuggets of information can be integrated directly into your program at home and can influence the way you ride and train your horses. Be sure to check out both the Sally Cousins Eventing website and keep up with her on Facebook.
Photo by Kasey Mueller
From Sally:
One of my favorite quotes is from Stephen Bradley: “If you didn’t bring it with you, you will not find it here.” We were talking about how prepared different horses were at an event. All horses have strengths and weaknesses, and it is our jobs as riders and trainers to fill in the gaps in their training.
Some horses don’t have a good lengthening, or can have some rails or may not be ready to make the time cross country. These are not training problems that would keep me from taking a horse to the competition. I would not take a horse that is fundamentally missing big parts of its training or doesn’t have the experience to safely complete the event.
I do try to be careful not to lose the event in the warm up. It is easy to see other riders warming up on impressive movers and be tempted to ask more of our horses than they are ready to give either physically or mentally. It will only upset our horses to try to do something at the event we can’t do at home. We need to have a careful plan for our warm up that brings out the best of our horse’s current training.
This also applies to show jumping warm up. I am careful not to jump too many fences or jump higher than necessary to prepare my horse for whatever level I’m competing. It is important not to jump more or higher than your horse needs to get the best out of it in the ring.
I have seen horses jump much higher in the warm up than the height that they are jumping in the competition, and some go into the ring a bit discouraged or scared. I know that some horses need more jumps or bigger fences to produce a good round, but it’s important to just know what best prepares your horse and stick with the plan.
