Unfortunately, not of the flying kind, because here’s the deal. As much as I love Copper, he’s not the horse for me any more. He has taught me a lot and together we’ve come quite a long way, but due to no fault of his own, I’ve out grown him and now I have to move on.
It really boils down to nothing less than his breeding and his movement. You see, Copper is the perfect Standardbred. Sound as a bell, sensible, quiet, works hard, goes forever, easy to catch, shoe, float, handle, so much more. In fact he’s the epitome of the Standardbred breed according to my instructor and therein lies the rub.
He’s never going to be a dressage horse. It basically slapped me in the face when I went to the Gooroman Park competition, but Copper is just not suited to dressage, or for that matter, show jumping either. He could go a lot further in show jumping than dressage, but our 55.88% score on the Prep 2 test? I don’t know that we could do much better than that. At least, not without a ton more work.
See, I could keep training Copper; but I would have to pour three times as much money and time into him to get him to the average standard, and in that time I could be training another horse and bringing it to a brilliant standard. Plus, I could do all that and we might never get past Preliminary dressage anyway as he most likely cannot produce an extended gaits, seeing as he can barely track up with his hind{ie ~ hind feet coming under his body to step on the tracks that his front feet leave}.
To sum it all up, Copper is good for what he is, but what he is isn’t good enough. So I am endeavouring to lease him out{because weak, soft girl that I am I can’t bear to sell him…} to a home that will appreciate his wonderful pleasure horse skills. : )
And in the mean time I am on the hunt for a new dressage/show jumping/possibly cross country prospect. Wish me luck!
See ya!
bonita
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