There are many reasons why I make posts to the website, but one of the main ones is to help others not make the same mistakes I make as my horse and I learn the sport of combined driving.
Whips...I personally am not very effective at using one. I can sort of work the left side but I'm not so great with the right. If a horse needs to be encouraged forward my whip is usually flopping around not making contact 90% of the time and hitting the harness or barely touching the horse the other 10%. I've definitely never put a whip mark on a horse.
So in the cones course on Sunday, as she was refusing the water I was flopping my whip around in an attempt to get her to go in. I was using my dressage whip which has a nice whispy lash on the end of it and damn if that flossy end didn't wrap right around my right rein. This extra challenge is not recommended on the cones course with an already mouth sensitive horse. Amazingly we made it through the rest of the course with no balls down.
Bob Giles was making funny comments throughout the course as TJ was filming and one of them was along the lines of "She went fishing and caught a big one." and then went on to say and this is why we don't use whips like this on marathon and cones. He also said her breeching looked too tight and while it didn't appear to be from my view, it definitely looks that way in the pics and video, so we will be loosening that up a bit.
Hopefully these tips will keep someone else from making the same mistake. Whispy whips on dressage day, short lashed whips on marathon and cones day.
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