Team Trip to Tielcey Park

After years of being uber expensive Tielcey park has finally lowered it's prices to $10 for the outdoor and $15 for the indoor which is very cheap really. It's now worth the hour drive over there to use the facilities and the jumps. So for the first time I loaded my entire team on the truck- Rascal, Kate, Bill and Connie. Kim took some really nice head shots while I was warming Rascal in which I'll now force you to look at.











Cute ponies eh! The colours haven't been altered it was actually that green. Strange eh. So anyway the goal was to get some flatwork footage of Rascal for a sales ad, to do some jumping with Bill and the just work Connie and Kate, over fences or on the flat. Rascal is starting to give me some really nice work but I see in the stills I'm riding her a bit deep and need to ease up on my hands and add some more leg. Still she felt really nice and elevated and through. I have a picture somewhere and the amount of elevation in her front end is really really good. She really is probably meant to be a little dressage horse. After the flatwork I had a jump around outside and despite the fact I'm pretty rusty she jumped confidently and cleared everything and felt mostly very very good.







Bill did some nice work. no as soft and relaxed as in the last photos but still was confident working around the indoor arena. She is picking up her right canter lead really well now but is very very unbalanced in that direction, though she did improve with more work. She did point out she was finding it hard though!



Then we did some jumping. At first poles on the ground where pretty scary which is funny really. Once she figured that out we put up a little jump that we fell over a few times. Then she figured that out and actually started to try clear it. We ended up making it about a foot and a half high in the middle I guess. She was reluctant going towards it, but despite arriving in a slow trot she felt so easy and strong off of the ground and up through the shoulder. A couple of times the back end jumped especially high and it was a bit scary to sit on. Next time we go over I will do a small course in the outdoor arena which she walked around quite happily when she cooled off. She is quite a brave little horse.



Connie wasn't sound on her foot she was missing a shoe on so got put away straight away and on the way home I stopped at the farriers and got a shoe put on her. Kim was warming up Kate and I tried to school her for 10 minutes but she was just so happy to be around jumps she wouldn't relax and work. She kept trying to lock onto the fences. So I chucked Kim back on and the two of them blasted around some small fences with grins from ear to ear on both faces. It looked so fun I couldn't resist having a little jump myself and jumping a few bigger fences- about 90cm I guess. Kate was really really good and felt really sound on her bung knee, no unlevelness at all. I guess the feed through joint supplement is helping. With more work on board, as her fitness training intensifies, it will be interesting to see what happens. She jumped really well but I was surprised how much confidence I have lost in her with the falls and stops we had at the end of last season. It's to be expected I guess but it seems like a shame. When we were done I was trotting her out and I patted her on the neck and she shook her head from side to side which is her happy signal. It was nice to feel her so happy again.