The British Driving Society
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Training day  at Elms Farm Equestrian Centre, Caythorpe, 18th November, 2007 with Angela Flanagan. BDS Attendees: Kathleen Faulkner & Woody, Anna Sadler & Monty, Cathy Towle & Mouse, Duncan Seth-Smith & Rambo. David Faulkner set this training day up some time ago and luckily he arranged for it to be inside, because for the first weekend in weeks the heavens opened, the sun stayed away and the wind chill must have been close to 0 degrees. With the weather so bad it was decided to stay in the arena with the outfits, to give the ponies a chance to cool down slowly in the dry, and although this took up some of the space there was still enough room to do the P&P from the Indoor Driving programme.

Angela Flanagan asked us what we wanted out of the day and we all went for either Paces or Precision training, followed by some training on cones. Angela spent time with each outfit firstly concentrating on the Paces part of P&P, trying to get the drivers and ponies working together. I wanted to concentrate on the Precision because that's where I thought I could improve the most, however Angela was not going to let us get off so lightly, and she concentrated on getting me to get Rambo to do some extension and to bend more. Angela explained that is was my fault because I wasn't driving him with enough contact. Well I am relatively new to this and I accepted her criticism, [I have since given the pony a good talking to about his attitude to corners]

When we had all had 2 sessions on P&P, the cones were set out, and Angela kept altering the course to get various degrees of difficulty and variety, so that she could see how we were all driving and how balanced the ponies were. When it was our turn there were two areas that Angela wanted me to concentrate on, Extension and Bending. This was linked to the actual test which requires you to round the end corner of the arena and then drive a diagonal and show some extended strides. Without going into the details by the end of the session I had learnt how to steady him and then push him on across the arena, and show a couple of extended strides.

The other part was getting into the corners and bending, Angela used cones to make me drive right into the corner before turning thus missing the cones. The first couple of goes Rambo thought we were going to go through the wall, plus there was a huge mirror so he could see himself which must have been quite frightening , once over that he thought we were doing obstacles and as soon as the turn was made he automatically cantered out the other side. After a couple of goes he began to trust that I was going to turn him before he head butted the mirror, and I was able to maintain a trot.

At the end of the day we all felt that we had got something from our sessions, and we had something to take away and practice. If you have the opportunity to join a training day in the future or have a lesson, go for it  because I'm sure you will find it useful, we all did.

Many thanks to David for organising the day and Angela for staying in the arena all day with only the odd cup of coffee.

Duncan

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