Reflective Essay: Team Analysis

Team Assessment
This semester I have ridden both Bacardi and Coovers. For the purpose of this paper I will assess my team work with Coovers since I have not had the opportunity to jump Bacardi, due to weather and health factors. Even though I have worked with Coovers in past semesters, we still have issues that need to be continually worked on. In class this semester we have been focusing on using an effective and correct position, coordinating our aids, maintaining consistent rhythm, tempo, and relaxation. In addition, we have been working on bending as well as straightness. Finally, we have been using all of the skills mentioned above to work on creating a horse who uses his body better, has a result has a rounder outline or “frame”,
This inconsistency in the gait caused takeoffs to occur either too far away from the first fence or too close to the first fence which effected the takeoff distance for the next fence since they were so close together. In addition, these bad distances caused some bucking and leaping at the end of the grid. This is a perfect example of how flat work effects work over fences. Coovers’s relaxation, connection, and impulsion issues all came into play for the cause of this problem. The lack of relaxation would cause Coovers to answer my driving aids by moving to canter instead of taking a longer stride, this created an irregular gate as we approached the fence. In addition, Coovers would toss his head up to avoid the bit, then proceed to trot in faster shorter trot steps and potentially move to quick canter steps. While Coovers probably knew what he was supposed to do, I could have helped prevent the problem by working on these issues on the flat during warm up and adding in more circles, leg yields, and figure eights to help rebalance and establish consistency before approaching the series of fences. Also, since Coovers did answer my aids by moving forward to canter I need to improve on telling him how to move forward with my seat in order to keep him trotting yet encouraging him to take longer steps (longer higher post and still half halting with my