I found and copied these questions from Viva Carlos and thought they would make a good different post to my usual!
What do you consider “jumping high” for yourself? We are not jumping much at all atm. I consider high for us to be 80cm+. However, I also feel that once we are jumping more regularly and got some confidence back we shouldn’t really be doing less than 60cm.
Credit Jason Bax, Equuis Photography.
What are your short term goals for riding? Do you think you’ll reach them? My short term goals are very much dressage focused with the main ones being score 70% at Intro level and score high 60%s at Prelim. I think we should hopefully achieve the intro score by the end of the year, as we scored 69.7% in our last test. So fingers crossed we hit that 70% soon! I am also still aiming to jump more often and have more lessons than I am. But it really depends on when I can find the time.
Long term goals for riding? Do you think you’ll reach them? My long term goals for me and Scottie are to event at BE100 and get to Elementary level dressage. However, I would like to try and get him higher at one or both of these disciplines if we can! I think we will get there as he is still young and he has the talent… I just need to put the work in. As for my personal riding goals, I think I want to find out what discipline is really me and compete to a good level in this discipline.
How many barns have you been at in your riding career? This is a tricky one to answer as I so far wouldn’t say I’ve had much of a career. But yards I have ridden at regularly and gain experience at I would say is 5. This includes the riding school where I learnt to ride, yards I have shared/ridden horses at and the yards I have kept Scottie at.
How many different trainers have you been with in your riding career? I haven’t been with a huge amount of trainers. When I was at a riding school I had maybe 4 different instructors over my 7 years there and since leaving I have only really had 2 or 3 regular instructors. But I have had several 1 off lessons over the years too.
Ever worked at a barn? What did you do? I have worked on a rehab yard and helped people ride and handle their horses. The latter was more for building the owner’s confidence rather than actually training or ‘fixing’ the horse. While I was at Uni I had to do yard duties at the Stud which was general yard work.
Scariest thing that has happened at your barn? Probably the scariest thing was when me and a friend were doing services at our yard and one of the horses cut its foot open on a sewage cover next to the field and he severed an artery. There was so much blood! But luckily the horse was fine after us stressing about getting hold of the owner and then the vet… The next time we looked after this horse he did something else stupid in the field and a few months later sadly had to be pts.
Have you ever given a lesson? What level was the rider? I don’t know if I would call it a lesson as such, largely because I don’t really consider myself much of a teacher. But a family I was helping with their pony who were all fairly novice I guess had ‘lessons’ from me to help them handle and ride their pony.
What is your opinion on the accuracy of critiquing riders online? I find that there are a lot of people who don’t really know what they are talking about offering ‘advise’ and ‘help’ online. I do not consider myself an expert or even overly experienced. However, lots of the comments I see come across as being plain stupid and/or mean. If they are asking for advice, by all means give your opinion on it. But chances are someone will disagree with you. I personally take anything I see online with a pinch of salt unless I trust the person it is coming from.
What is the ideal height of a horse for you? I like bigish horses. I wouldn’t go for anything under 16h partly due to my height, partly due to preference. But also not sure I would choose anything much bigger than 17h, especially if they are long backed.
Last Updated on 05/06/2022
