YOUNG HORSE JOURNEY // Including Fails and Falls

Hey guys! So in this video I'm going to be basically putting together all the clips of Cal from the first time he was broken until basically a year on. So the first clip is him putting tack on for the first time. If you don't know Cal he is actually a homebred. He's our first full wheel ever bred. He is by a stallion called Eustonoff and his dam is my mare Fiona who is by Clover Flush. So he's definitely bred to jump although as you can see our whole jumping journey is definitely not smooth but we have definitely got there and I'm really really happy with how he's going now. So I have a whole video on how I break horses so you can watch that instead of watching loads of clips of me lunging and everything like that. This was maybe one of my first times riding him in the arena. He was so quiet to break. He never booked, never did anything at all. In fact he was actually very lazy which was my biggest problem with him. He's actually looked quite small here as well which is which I think is kind of funny because he definitely has grown into himself a little bit better. Here's him. You can see I have a schooling whip which is a nice long whip to try and reinforce my leg aid because he would just not listen to me at all and you can see he gets quite caught up and a problem we had for a while was him getting behind the verticals so I would tap him forward whenever he did that. I actually don't have much contact on my reins. He does tend to tuck his head in. You can actually see there's like slack in my reins there but that was just something we worked on for a little while. So I would use my schooling whip as I was saying just get him going forward. You can see here there's just no energy. He's just very very slow which you know isn't the worst thing. It would be not very nice to have a very hot horse who was constantly galloping off and that but it's definitely something we had to work on. Here's him a little bit further on. You can see he's going forward a little bit better. We also have a little change of bit. This is a bit with cheek pieces to basically it helps with steering because it puts pressure. It almost pushes them over instead of just you know pulling their mouth around. It kind of presses their face so that it's pushing them in the right direction. So after he did that bit of trotting he went on a break and then he came back that Christmas and this was my first canter on him. I was just asking him to go forward and he offered up the canter so I said great and then because he had offered it I asked him to do it and got him on the right lead and he had a good canter. Again there was no booking or any funny business at all. He is like the quietest horse ever. Yeah he's a bit of a legend and you can see there's a little bit more energy in the trot too. I forgot to say but he is three in these videos. I back them when they're three and then they go off on a break after they've just had a walk in a trot in the arena and they come back in when they're the year they're four. See he's just obviously a little bit inconsistent in the bit but it's just baby moments and you can't expect him to be perfect. We start to see a bit of his lovely trot now. He has quite a flashy trot when he gets going and he's very floaty. It feels so nice. He feels a lot bigger than he looks. So this was his first time going over a pole. As you can see he was not keen. He was very very afraid and this is a common theme throughout this video. He always thinks backwards when it comes to things he's not sure about and then it takes a bit of encouragement but we always end the day on a positive. So as you can see we go from not being able to walk over it to trotting fairly confidently. It just takes a little bit time but he does get it and he gets it quite quickly. So then we have a canter over the pole and this is the first time I actually jump him and it was very underwhelming. He just kind of pops over it very simply. Not like those big fancy show jumping four-year-olds that you see in videos but it's okay. We'll take what we can get. He has a little spook so I just kind of slip my reins so I don't catch him in the mouth and then we just canter around to it again. Yeah so it's pretty basic but he's good. So here I'm just doing a bit more cantering. You can see our aids to canter is a lot sharper. He goes when I ask him to and I also start doing a lot more pole work. I do lots of trotting poles everything like that because obviously he was very spooky towards the pole so I want him to know that poles are his friend because I would like him to be a show jumper and it's not ideal if a show jumper is afraid of poles. So here you can see our little canter transitions are a little bit better. He always goes on the right lead now and he's actually quite a balanced horse for a young horse probably because he's quite small. Here he's doing his trotting poles, finding his feet. I have parallel poles either side so he stays straight because even at such an early stage and such a basic level like three trotting poles it's still important to put in place all the things that you want when you start jumping. So even if it is just a pole I still want him to go straight and if you put these things in place very early on it'll help you in the long term because straightness is very important. So we started doing trotting poles on the lunge because again it was so hard to lunge him over poles he was very afraid of them but here he is when he started getting used to them although he still really didn't want to touch them but this also helped build up some strength. So I just started doing little courses of poles and little tiny cavaletties just so it became a normal thing that he would go over poles. I didn't want to jump him at this stage because he was only young but doing you know like 20 centimetre poles is definitely not going to do any harm. So I just wanted him to get the idea of it, work on straightness, a few distances just to get his confidence. You see he enjoyed that one a little bit, wanted to have a little book and also working on changing the rein over poles getting his balance, coming back to trot just all the little things that go into jumping. You can work on so many of them just by doing small poles like if you really think about being straight, having adjustability, you can really work a lot on jumping even though you're not actually jumping. So here was a little jump we did, you can see how much more confident he is and he had a little book there which I had to pull him up so he didn't run into the trotting poles but I gave him a good pat afterwards so he didn't think I was mad at him and there he was much more sensible. And here you can see that our trot is much more forward, he doesn't come behind the vertical too much now, he's a bit more out in his nose, still always going over poles as much as possible just getting him really desensitised to them and you can see his big trot there. So this is February, at this time I started riding him less often so I ride him every second or third day and this was because if I had a hot horse I would want to ride them more but because he was so naturally lazy, the less I rode him the more energy he had every time I rode him and I was able to get more out of the session. I wasn't nagging him all the time. This is also when I started using spurs because I felt like it just gave me a better response than the whip and I didn't have a whip you know like flapping around when I was trying to jump or go over poles and I didn't have to keep switching over the whip each time and I was also able to start teaching him to move away from my leg. It's just a very different aid than a whip and here is me jumping him now. There I was very very happy because that was his first time jumping that jump and he didn't spook at it but then we got back to normal Cal which was oh god I don't want to jump that but instead ended up jumping over a pole so he didn't really actually get out of anything but then if you just go back and trot him to it he was very good. He just finds when you come at things faster than he can think he finds it a bit overwhelming and because he's only four he can't think very fast so basically this happened a lot when we first when we jump something first he would spook and run out and then every session we would work on it and then by the end he would jump it well so that obviously we didn't jump very often these clips are like you know a week or two apart but here you can see again spooks at it so we try again and jump it and then keep working on it until he jumps it really nice and confidently and like this time this is the last time I jumped it this day you can see much more confident and nice and careful and so yeah it was basically repetition repetition all the time this was his first little course very very tiny fences but good for getting him you know thinking about coming to jumps off different turns some distances even this is a big improvement I also start putting little fillers in like you can see this one here which he definitely found very spooky but then we would jump it a few times and he would be much much better again it was all just patience and showing him over and over again that you know it's not a big deal and as long as you end on a good note they realize that oh wait this isn't too bad I can do this so you just always want to give them a good experience so there's me jumping a little bit of a bigger fence which was a very good boy oh so here I am I realized that I had the quietest four-year-old in the world so I thought oh we'll take off his bridle why not and here I was trying to steer him away from the fence but he locked on and then gave like the biggest jump over that tiny fence um so you can see that he's definitely getting over his fear of jumping anyway um seeing as I was trying to steer him away from that jump it wasn't too good at the bridleless um wasn't super responsive to the neck rope but uh we managed to do a little bit so here he is in March in March I played a little bit with uh taking off his noseband and I felt like he he rode better with it off I also have a breastplate in this video because the um the saddle was starting to slip back a little bit that jump there was my first time jumping over that um those fillers underneath and he jumped it immediately like straight away and I was so so happy with that like we didn't have any spooking or anything and here I tried a different kind of filler these white ones you can see he was very not sure but instead of being not sure backwards he starting to be not sure but still going forwards which is nice he's just starting to trust that I'm not going to point him at something I think he's going to hurt himself on this is my first and only fall so far off Cal it's the most ridiculous fall basically my dad was standing in front of the jump and when he landed Cal saw my dad and was like oh ---- um but as you can see it didn't knock his confidence too much and he went and jumped it again anyway um but yeah touch wood I haven't so not too bad here is his first doubles you can see he's pretty sticky um and then we come to this jump and I'm not sure why he jumps it so big but he does and I completely lose my balance and pull the mouth off him which I'm really really angry about but there's honestly nothing I can do I was not expecting that jump at all um I'd like to see the majority of people try and sit that when it's so unexpected but um again as I was saying the first round sticky second round a lot more confident and that's how every training session basically went on him at first it would be a little bit oh not sure and then we would work on it and then he'd always end the session nice and confident and happy and that was it so this was his first time ever going away from home again I'm just gonna sound like a broken record but he started off very spooky um we couldn't even get him into the arena so the reason he's sweaty also was because it was his first time traveling and he got a little bit nervous and he had a big winter coat on him uh so that's why he's a bit sweaty it's not because I was riding him I'd literally just gotten up so here again could barely get him over the poles but he's just so funny the way he improves like young horses are so satisfying like that like at the start of this round like the start of this day I couldn't get him into the arena and then by the end we jump around a few like 90 and meter fences so it's really cool like young horses are just so exciting you can really make a lot of progress very quickly so here again jumps it he didn't stop at all this day and it's just really showing how he's improving and in confidence and um trusting me a but he seems very happy so I bring him to these rainbow fillers and jumps at first time very very proud of him he really is a good boy once he realizes he can do something you know he knows he can do it um so it's great um here he jumps very big over but I was very happy that he stayed and jumped the second part which was nice um here I jumped this oxer and this was probably one of my biggest jumps to so yeah really really exciting I was so happy with him this day and here's just one last jump that we did so we just took our time never in a rush with young horses so then he went on a break when I was at college and he came back in I was on my summer holidays I think he looks really different in this video I think it's a summer coat he looks like he grew a bit over the spring so it's just me bringing him into work here's me riding him in the summer god I wish it was summer again um you can see he's a lot more forward still he's starting to move a bit I'm not having to kick him all the time kick him forward but uh yeah he's very good and I gave him a little jump um he was he was pretty good yeah this is a obviously a few weeks after coming back into work jumped him we're starting to jump a little bit bigger now he's staying confident and he's very keen when he jumps he's a lot keener when he's jumping than doing flat work that's for sure um see there he's taking a few flyers and this is me jumping some fillers again that he remembers from the Christmas and he knows oh I can do them this is first time jumping that gate which is a very spooky fence and he didn't mind it at all so I taught the first time just to give him some more time to think about it and look at it and encounter the second time so this was his first show and it was a disaster and I never posted this video before um but that first fence you can see it wasn't very nice um it just shows that you can be going great at home but shows are just a dimpering kettle of fish especially with young horses so we come around and we've never had trouble with doubles before unfortunately he saw this double he jumped in very very big and scared himself and wasn't about to jump that second part so we went around again but he was just he just lost his confidence so when he stopped that time I called it a day I said no way not happening and this was a two-day show so I had a class the next day as well so that evening we were at the show we were stabled there so we went and we schooled doubles in the warmth arena we did them loads and loads of times you can see he got all his confidence back he remembered what he was doing I obviously just hadn't jumped a double for a little while at home that he had forgotten kind of about them you can see he's a lot more confident there and this is the next day um and it is yeah he's a lot more confident obviously he's very very spooky um here he spooks with the wheelbarrow after the jump but he's very good and jumps it anyway although I do nearly fall off um and he yep there's a few more jumps before the double um we actually jumped two rounds this second day and he was clear in both of them we jumped 80 centimeters twice and it just shows what you know going back to basics and just working on something and just re-establishing something that they do already know they just do forget things so now I'm coming around to the double and I remember being like oh no please please remember what we did yesterday and it's actually just crazy the difference like look how confident he is going into this he nearly did one stride he was so confident going into it so it's just young horses you just really have to go back to basics and you can give them confidence back they're so impressionable when they're young but that's a good thing and a bad thing it's bad because if you give them a few bad experiences they'll they'll remember it but if you're quick to um give them their confidence back and show them that they can do it then they will they'll be like yeah you're right we can do this we've done it a million times before so I'm coming around to the second double but I was pretty confident at this stage that he would jump it and oh wait maybe I didn't never mind I lied that wasn't a double and the next fence is a double and it's like the second last fence so yeah it was a great learning experience for both of us um and it was just so much to look at so many fillers so many horses Cal does tend to be quite herd bound so it can be hard he gets very distracted by other horses um there that was our clear round so then we went home and I schooled him over triples just for good measure now you can see how confident he is once he knows what he's doing he's very happy to do it this is a second show that was a little jump in the warm-up and this was his first 90 and he had one baby fence down um it was still a little bit wobbly you know he is only a baby he's still looking and everything but you can see how confident he is for fillers he's never seen any of these jumps before and he was just yep no problemo he was a great boy um except when I ride him like an idiot and nearly get left behind but um that's just young horses for you this fence I think is the one that he just tips it's just on a corner with a bit of a funny wing so I think he got a bit distracted then he um pulled it together and took the rest of the round clear jumped all his doubles doubles weren't an issue after that previous show and we never actually had an issue ever again with them it's just nipping something in the bud before it becomes a problem and he's actually never stopped I don't think anything since I can't remember him stopping he's completely confident with jumping now he um never has any issues at all and here he is coming to another double and as you can see he's just he doesn't even think about it so in August we went to Mill Street which was a five day show and we jumped three classes on him and it wasn't the best show for results we had like one fence down in every class um but it was still a really really good experience stabling away for that long a time such a big atmosphere you can see he's having good fun and flying around these jumps but um it's just all exposing exposing him to new things you can see all the horses walking around outside the arena and everything like that it's just you can't get this atmosphere at home you can't really school this um you can only go to shows and then work on them there and this is actually funny this round because we were coming around here and there's a tractor raking the other arena and he doesn't like tractors as you can see the poor thing but he was an absolute saint and jumps this off like two strides after spooking and clears it and jumps the next fence he is just yeah he's a great boy um so this is the same venue as his first show and it's just interesting to see the difference in rounds so he just looks like a different horse he's so much more mature the rhythm is a lot better he's taking things out of stride he's being really careful but still forward we have absolutely no issues with doubles it's just basically like a different horse um we jumped our first meter in this show and this is a 90 centimeter and the meter is the next class and yep he was I think he had one down in this round no he was clear in this round and he had one down in the meter um and that's all I did with him then he went on a break and he's still on a break because he's only four and I'm in college and I'm in no rush to you know get him up heights or anything like that so I didn't mind that obviously he's not on par with the majority of four-year-olds but that's fine I'm in no rush with him at all I'm just so happy with how he's improved you can just see the difference in confidence between like his first show and this show it's completely different and it's only about four shows apart um young horses really do improve so quickly it's really really satisfying I absolutely love working with them so yeah that's it for this video I hope you enjoyed here's him jumping the double in the meter just to show that he is so confident now so I hope you enjoyed this video and I know found it kind of satisfying because I found it really really lovely to watch I'd completely forgotten about how he was at the start when I first started riding him that's just really reassuring to see how much progress we made um as usual I'm not looking for advice or training tips um because I have trainers and yeah so you can enjoy some photos now like um throughout the years of Cal um from his very scan when we found out that Fiona was pregnant to some more recent photos um it's been just such a rewarding process um especially him being our first homebred horse definitely had its ups and downs I definitely felt sometimes like I was useless like he was useless like giving up but um it's always when you look back on old videos that you realize how far you've actually come and I am so excited to keep working with him so yeah and yeah please subscribe and leave a comment um and I'll see you next time bye guys