Gia - session 1074 - War Horse schooling

 As I had mentioned in the last blog, I took Gia to the War Horse schooling and show this past weekend.  No thanks to a fall from Phillip and a sprained ankle, I was only able to ride her on Saturday for the schooling.  But, with the torrential downpours on Sunday, I didn't mind too much.

As soon as I got on Gia on Saturday, she was immediately tense, and immediately resistant to go forward.  None of this is a new reaction for her at a show, but I had hoped it would be a bit better.  Unfortunately, we were running behind in our timetable, and me pushing her to walk on to get to the stadium warm up did not help matters at all.  I was able to get her to work through her tension with circles to help redirect her attention, and we were able to get over the warm up jumps.  They started out rough at first, but ended up going fairly well.  When we went into the show ring for our schooling round however, she reverted, and we didn't get very far.  There was a LOT of bucking before, after, in between, during ... you name it.  We used up our three minutes of schooling and only managed to make it through jump three.

We still had cross country schooling to go.  It started out rough as well - lots of bucking, the same as stadium.  She eventually did settle down and just jump, but this was definitely not the way I had envisioned things going.  We will be back at it another day, for another try, with more practice under our belts, and hopefully, things will turn out differently.  

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