Trainer's Challenge Obstacles Revealed!

Polly following me onto the bridge

There are only a few more days left until the Trainer's Challenge, in fact, less than a month remains! With thirty days to go, DEHFR released the full list of obstacles and skills that will be required on the 20th of September. My professional division certainly requires a pretty good list of stuff, and Polly and I have set to work accomplishing all of the tasks.

I already had an inkling (from looking at photos of previous challenges) that there would be pool noodles and baby pools involved, and both of those things are a little tricky to get used to, so Polly has been experiencing those for a while now. However, in just a few short weeks, she is to have mastered the following: a simple change, a rein back, a turn on the forehand, a figure eight at the trot, and a square halt, and that is just for her freestyle!

The freestyle is followed by the Obstacle Challenge, which is a little more complicated. It will be composed of ten of the following fifteen obstacles, each of which is assigned a point value (based on the difficulty). We each have five minutes to complete as many of the following: teeter-totter bridge, turn on the haunches/forehand inside a hula hoop, walk through a smoke machine, walk over a tarp and under a noodle curtain, go through a kiddie pool with water, shoot a target with a squirt gun, jump a small cross rail, back through some hay bales, open a mail box, drag bottles behind the horse, mummify a person, a trot to halt transition, side-pass over a pole, load into a trailer, and trot through a barrel pattern. Of course not ALL of these will be required, but all of them are fair game!

So, in the past week or so, Polly and I have increased the frequency that we practice specific movements. She is now comfortable with the baby pool, both on the ground and under saddle. All of the obstacles can be completed by leading the horse, but of course it is superior to ride them if possible. She has had the pool noodles on her stall door for several weeks now, and she has finally stopped squirming when they touch her, so that's good.

Yesterday we took a mini field trip to the farm in Keswick where the Equine Welfare Society is based. Polly has been at my farm, but a trip in the trailer was good for her to learn that travel is not stressful, and that it can be fun! She hung out in a big stall while I rode the other rescue horses, and then at the end of the day got her turn. We build a bridge just for her to practice on, and she was super. She was very blasé about the whole thing. We started on the ground, with me leading her, before I hopped on for some riding. She then hopped on the bridge and hung out a little, getting some peppermints and some pats for her efforts.

It was good to have Erica watch Polly go, as she hasn't seen the mare since we picked her up almost six weeks ago. When you are very close to the training process, sometimes it can seem like there is no progress, but an outside perspective can remind you how far you have come! I realized that Polly's training is actually going pretty well, considering we have only been together for a short amount of time. There are a lot of horses that would not do as much for me as she does after only a few weeks!

I am heading to England next week, so Polly will get a little time off. She will still get groomed and handled every day, and probably will gain some weight! I am not terribly upset about this, although we always think that time without work is less valuable than the alternative, I think that it will probably benefit her to have a quick break, for both her mental and physical state. She is getting a crash course in how to be a sport horse, so she might enjoy a little breather!

Until next time!