Legacy the Brat

Well the problem has certainly been identified after this weekend's show at Loch Moy Farm....Legacy is a huge brat!! I'm not sure what caused his mental breakdown over the past month and a half, but something has definitely got him buggered. Here's the story...we ran Training this weekend and I was just worried that he would shut down regardless of the size of the fences. We started out with a 33.2 in dressage...not our best, but solid...we were in 4th. Then we had a 4 hour break in the sweltering heat until we jumped. In stadium warmup he didn't want to go forward, but after a few swift kicks he was fine and we were going. He was fine in the ring and the round was smooth...we pulled the last rail, which was a planked vertical, but I think it was my fault for not making enough of an adjustment after I got a long spot to the oxer that was 5 strides out from the vertical...ok fine. So then we go to XC warmup. Well all the jumps were facing the trailers and such, so he's fine to the jumps, but when I turn to gallop away, he pins his ears and doesn't want to move forward. So the first jump is on a bend away from the trailers and then the next 3 jumps are directly away from everything...so my gut tells me I'm going to have a problem. By the way, it was different walking the Training course, all the jumps looked tiny, which helped me as you'll see once I finish my story. So we get over the 1st jump and heading to the 2nd, he's really sticky, swapping leads and not going forward. I get him over that one and really try and kick him forward where he proceeds to have a bit of a fit and starts hopping and is barely going forward...we are in the middle of the field. After his 1st temper tantrum I get him over #3 which was a house into the woods. Then he was great over the next few...I was worried about #5 and 6 which was a rolltop with an awful approach to a downbank. Well I never got straight and I rode it terrible, but he was a champ and did it himself. If there was a place I thought he would be a jerk it would've been there. Then through the first water he's great. Then I had to make a right turn, again away from the trailers and other horses, and now he really has a tantrum. The next fence was a big brush with a ditch...about 4 strides out he stops swings his butt around and is just being an idiot. So this time I DID NOT go for my whip, but instead just squeezed. He trotted forward and took the brush basically with very little moment (the loser certainly is talented...ugh, frustrating). Well then we had a little talk on our gallop to the next fence (that did include the whip). He was great the rest of the course...it was too easy. Once I got him going I decided I wasn't really going to slow him down, so we came in 30 seconds under the Optimum time...with the heat and everything I feel confident he's in good shape. He still had a lot left at the end of the course. I wasn't sure if the jump judges were going to give me a stop and 20 penalties for our little fight, even though it had nothing to do with the jump, but they didn't and we ended up in 3rd.

So now I know what the problem is. I still don't know if he was hurting at Rubicon and it contributed to the stops, but that course was going directly away from everything as well and was close to the trailering area. So now we are thinking that we need to get him to places where XC is farther away...i.e. Morven and Fairhill were all far away from earlier in the season. I'm also thinking that maybe he'd be better over a few days to try and mitigate his laziness and make him be able to mentally get through all phases over a few days instead of crammed into one day. It's tough because the costs go up considerably for multiple days because of stabling. So I accomplished what I needed to this weekend...we didn't get eliminated and I got him around XC. We also identified the problem and hopefully we can find a way to fix it. It's difficult because this isn't a training issue that I could work on, so we just have to drag him to shows and see if we can work this out of him.