Sunday, August 14, 2011

In which misjudgements are made

Ouch!
Last weekend was the Laurie Lever showjumping clinic at Strathalbyn SJC. For those non-horsey people out there Laurie Lever represented Australia at the Beijing Olympics.
The Saturday lesson went well. We jumped around 70cm and Twistie didnt put a hoof wrong. Laurie's teaching method was based around the correction of the riders position and the use of placement poles. Placement poles are jump rails lying on the ground on stride before and sometimes after jumps with the aim of getting the horse to take off for the jump in the correct spot. I personally am not convinced as it just means you stuff up the stride before the placement pole instead of the stride before the jump. But anyway: Sunday also started fine. We were doing an exercise with jumps on related lines (one jump then a distance of three to six strides to the next jump). Our fences were not quite strided out correctly so you could either do 3 or 4 strides between the first pair and 4 or 5 strides between the second pair. Laurie was asking us to do 3 and 4 strides which means pushing the horse into a longer stride to eat up the distance. It was all going well. Twistie was managing easily because we practice altering her stride alot. However, at one point we came around into the second pair of jumps too fast. She was unbalenced after the first jump, stumbled over the placement pole and got tangled in the top rail of the second jump. I fell off and have possibly fractured my pelvis. I repeat Ouch!
The doctors said not to bother with x-rays as the treatement is the same whether it is broken or not. BED REST. So I am bored. I have tried going to work two mornings over the past week and only lasted until around 10:30 each day. The pain is less than it was but still not at all comfortable. Twistie and Anya are bored and in desperate need of exercise. Twistie is racing around the paddock and Anya is being destructive and barking.
Attached are some recent pictures of Twistie and Anya

1 comment:

Emma said...

Poor Tori - that sounds really painful.