Woods Baughman & C’est la Vie 135 (Dressage) - EDITED
2:38PM Mar 16, 2023
Speakers:
Speaker 1
Woods
Keywords:
jump
work
bit
canter
attacking
breath
star
spooky
bridle
opposite effect
spook
ring
good
terrified
encourages
softer
statue
relaxed
schooling
stop
How was your test?
It was pretty good, he was a little spooky in a few places. He's terrified of the statue (?) I had to really work every time I got about halfway down the ring -- he had a big spook when he was entering the arena. He was spooking at that and the noise and then the horses coming in, so he had jumped into the ring. Had to take a breath, but he was good after that.
And you have them in the three-star this weekend, what was kind of your thought process with that?
I'm trying a few new things, and I just didn't want to have them in the four-star because it's quite big here. If something goes wrong, it's better to have it at a level that he's super comfortable that rather than one you have to work quite hard at to begin with. So just in case, if the changes are too much for him, it won't cause too much of a problem. I really needed to take a breath and just relax a little bit more. Of course, here it's just so attacking, but I thought if he's in the four-star it'll actually have the opposite effect here, because it really just encourages them to come forward and attack, and I need him to stop attacking.
And what kind of changes have you put in? I know before Bruce's field, you said you kind of jump more often than you did in the past.
I've been schooling him a little bit more often -- jumping smaller, but more often -- so that he just has the mental release of it, because he really is better after he's had a good jump. He gets to go jump a few cross country, so every time we canter he can just do it in a relaxed way on softer contact. Liz has helped me build a new bridle for him to have a little bit more control on that end, and then I came a bit early to ride with Will Faudree a little bit to work on a few style differences, to try to hold him a little bit better, and my position so that it's not all on trying to stop him, but just getting him to make better decisions.
