I'm feeling incredibly frustrated with Angel. She's not an easy horse as she's stressy and clingy with other horses and often really bolshy and hard to handle on the ground, but she's fun to ride and I do think we've bonded. Training-wise, it's often a battle of wills but we're getting there with our flatwork and jumping 80-90 showjumping and XC. BUT every time I take her out to a show, it's a nightmare. Yesterday I took her to a hunter trial, and we were just doing the 70cms - a nice straightforward course that we've ridden in training plenty of times before. There was no reason not to get a clear. She was on her toes, clingy with her companion and broke away from the lorry and ran off while I was collecting our numbers! My friend caught her. Then she was fine in the warmup, jumped the practice jumps perfectly, but bronked when I tried to ride her out of the warmup (away from her travelling companion) and into the start area. I set off but could feel she was sort of cantering sideways with no positive forward energy. We got to jump THREE - a fence we've jumped loads of times before - and she put in a dirty stop and ditched me. I was fine but as you can imagine, my pride was badly hurt! If I was the crying type, I'd have been in floods, but I'm not so I just went into a foul mood instead and went to bed as soon as I got home! It's so frustrating. She's brilliant in training and will jump anything. She's so talented. But I don't know how to get her going forward when she turns into a nappy horror like that. She was reversing, spinning, bronking. Smacking her doesn't help, she's worked herself up into too much of a state to respond in a positive way to that, it would just be a guaranteed way to get bucked off. What I really need to do is take her away and ride her somewhere quiet until she calms down, but obviously that isn't an option when you have 30 seconds to ride out of the start box!
She's on Regumate which helps a bit with the bolshiness but hasn't been the miracle cure I'd hoped it would be. I ride her nearly every day and we go out in the trailer at least once a week to clinics etc. I think I need to just travel her alone as at least then she doesn't suffer separation anxiety when her companion is taken away. The downside of that is that she's harder to handle in the lorry parking and if I walk away from her for any reason, she tries to follow me and gets anxious if she can't see me, which isn't ideal.
I think the main problem is that shows blow her mind!
It's not a pain issue as she's up to date with back, teeth and tack, not lame in any way, and was fine 30 seconds before so please don't suggest I get the vet out for a full workup that will cost £1000 that I don't have. But any other suggestions are more than welcome!
She's on Regumate which helps a bit with the bolshiness but hasn't been the miracle cure I'd hoped it would be. I ride her nearly every day and we go out in the trailer at least once a week to clinics etc. I think I need to just travel her alone as at least then she doesn't suffer separation anxiety when her companion is taken away. The downside of that is that she's harder to handle in the lorry parking and if I walk away from her for any reason, she tries to follow me and gets anxious if she can't see me, which isn't ideal.
I think the main problem is that shows blow her mind!
It's not a pain issue as she's up to date with back, teeth and tack, not lame in any way, and was fine 30 seconds before so please don't suggest I get the vet out for a full workup that will cost £1000 that I don't have. But any other suggestions are more than welcome!
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