While I was at home over lockdown, I decided to take part in an online trec competition.  Galahad and I haven’t done any trec in a few years because of transport issues and, although I have known about competitions online, for some reason I have never got around to taking part.

I signed up whilst I was still not riding so I only entered the in-hand classes.  We have only done a handful of those before so I wasn’t entirely sure how we would get on but it promised to be a fun way to use our time.

It was fun too.  Many of the tasks were things I knew we could do fairly competantly but there was the odd thing – such as getting Galahad to touch a pole with his nose and then his foot – which we had never even attampted before.  I have, however, been introducing him to some clicker training which was invaluable in training for these – although we still haven’t quite got the touching with a foot yet.

I signed up for five tasks as part of a league and they were all very different.  The first felt much like a ridden test but there were also tests on the lunge and a specific polework one (which felt very messy but scored a lot better than I thought it would).  Unfortunately I went back to work when I had only completed three tasks and that was overwhelming enough to stop me filming the other two before the closing date.

It didn’t matter though – the main aim had been to have fun and to give me something different to do with Galahad whilst I wasn’t riding him.  It was certainly successful in that.