Lenny Tries his Heart Out
Training with Carl
The weekend before the Nationals I had a training session with Carl Hester. We were working on left to right change after half pass as Lenny can be short or late behind. I had to really think of holding quarters with my right leg almost pushing a little into the quarters left, then ask for left to right change making sure he stays straight.
Not shown in the video but Lenny also finds diagonal extended to flying change difficult, so we were doing extended to corner and halting, using the corner to make him stop himself so he got used to coming back better after the extention to collection before change.
Generally we worked on getting him to canter slower and smaller with his neck lower, to help with self carriage and collection.
At the Nationals
I was so thrilled with Lenny. He tried his heart out for me and that’s all you can ask of your horse! We did a beautiful test, being placed 17th out of a very strong class of 34 with 67.66%. At the end we had a helicopter fly over very low and I thought we were off to the next arena but he soon put his feet back down! Thank you to Jo Bryne for the ride on her lovely horse and for all her hard work and also to all my support team and sponsors – we couldn’t do it without you!
