Combined Training with Coco

Its been a while since I’ve done a proper update on Coco and what we’ve been up to lately. Well, we’ve well and truly settled into our new yard and the progress we’ve made since the move has been incredible. About two months ago I made the decision to get my big girl pants on and start pushing mine and Coco’s jumping. We had been coasting at the same level for a while so I decided to recruit Jer in to give me and Coco the push we needed. I seemed to learn something new about Coco with every lesson while also finding different areas of my own riding that need improving. So while we still have a lot to work on, we are now at the stage where I’m feeling much more confident about bringing her out. So we started with our first Combined Training show…

I’ll be honest, I was a bit worried about going to this event. I didn’t know which Coco I was going to get as she had been very difficult the week before the show. She was in season and not in any mood for work (can’t say I blame her to be honest). Well, I needn’t have been worried at all because Coco exceeded all expectations. I genuinely couldn’t have asked for more from her. 

For our combined training, we took on the BD Prelim 7 Dressage Test and an 80cm Showjumping course. Between tantrums and spooks I managed to learn our test a few days before the event and keep her keen by popping around a handful of jumps, making sure not to overdo it. We got to the venue and found that the entire event was going to take place on grass which Coco took to like a fish to water. We warmed up and entered the arena for our dressage test and I can genuinely say she didn’t put a single foot wrong. I was so proud of her. We even came out with a very respectable score of 31.7%.

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Next it was on to the showjumping round and with that came the rain. This was the part of the day that I was most nervous about. I had a quick look at the course before I started some warm up jumps and the first thing I noticed was that there were fillers at nearly every fence. I quickly realised that this was going to be the real test for me and Coco. I was going to ask her to jump 8 fences that she had never seen before and in an arena that she had never been in before..total deep end. Again, my fears were completely unfounded as Coco went in and took on every single fence like a pro and didn’t knock a single pole, giving us a lovely clear rou

This had been probably one of our most successful days together. I was absolutely beaming with pride and to top it all off we came home with a 1st place rosette!

Needless to say I was delighted with Coco! I felt like we were FINALLY starting to see the progress we’d been working towards for the last year and a half.  When you have so many setbacks and knocks to confidence it can be so hard to push yourself to try again. It’s a great feeling when it eventually pays off.

Make sure to check in soon for more updates on Coco and what we’ve been up to! We’ve had a busy few weeks 🙂

Thanks for reading,

Orla