Coco’s Return to Coilóg

Still flying high from the success of our combined training event, myself and Darielle took the horses for a schooling session in Coilóg the other week. Anyone who’s been following the blog since the beginning will know that the last time I brought Coco to Coilóg it resulted in me having my first fall off Coco. Read all about it here. While I was feeling much more confident that we wouldn’t see a repeat of last time, I was still quite worked up and apprehensive about our return to this particular venue.

I started warming Coco up and straight away I could see the difference between this time and last time. Last time Coco was spooking at EVERYTHING in the arena, this time it was just one particular area which I could deal with.

Once warmed up we started popping a few fences and as usual it took us a few attempts to get into our rhythm. We jumped a few combinations with fillers, which Coco didn’t bat an eyelid to, before taking on a full course. This is where we started to struggle a bit.

Between my own nerves, lack of fitness and Coco still being quite green, we had more than a few hairy moments. We had some runouts due to spooking and some pullouts due to me completely bottling it – two issues that all come down to my own riding that I need to work on. We also had some dodgy strides into some fences because I just didn’t have the fitness to ask Coco for the strides she needed to take off on and she doesn’t have any experience jumping bigger courses like we were doing that day.

However in saying all that, we still managed to get some really good jumping in over some decent sized fences. I just need to up my game a little and I need to focus on strengthening Coco up so she can handle these bigger courses.

All in all though the day was definitely a success. I was a little disappointed in my own riding as I felt I let Coco down at times but she trooped on and remained very honest coming up over some fences that she could have very easily dumped me over. We’ll be more ready for it next time though!

Check out the short video below of some of our highlights!