15/06/2026
Gettina and I were to competition on Saturday evening starting 135 & 140cm classes.
It has been very bad weather in Denmark with rain & sun, rain & sun in multiple days so neither me nor her were in our summer mood as there was no summer anywhere nearby 😂🐴
In the warm up, all went well but I lacked bit of the “Gettina killer” feeling.
In the first class, 135cm, Gettina didn’t feel so secure on her legs and the horse I usually have to keep a bit back felt a bit like hesitating to go forward.
We got one bad jump where Gettina jumped through the oxer taking the poles with her. The galop was missing there. I stopped right after making sure she is ok and wanted to take one more jump just to end well. However she felt really good so I took and more and one more until we ended the round with nice ride.
Afterwards, I wanted to cancel my next start as The Gettina was just not there, but I decided after some thoughts to try it… with Gettina and the way she is and has always been, sometimes the competition place just “doesn’t fit her” and after she rides one class she is much better in the second class as she has already “seen it”.
This time I could feel it is either that situation and all the shining sun and jumps after rain or she just doesn’t feel good on the sand that has gotten rain for days (yes Gettina is very sensitive on the smallest changes in conditions and in general very cautious of her surroundings).
I could pretty fast conclude (on jump number 3) that she is, as I could feel from the start, just not feeling good on her legs and I stopped, raised my hand to retire the class and left.
I could have listened to my feeling after the first class where I could just feel she is not secure, but it was just not easy to differentiate which of the two situations we were at - Gettina being bit cautious of the new surroundings or Gettina not feeling good about the conditions.
Some days we win and some days we learn.
And I love learning and now I learned to listened to my gut feeling next time. 🐴❤️
I took two jumps more in the warm up arena after i retired the class just to check on things and left the place happily returning home, taking Gettina out to the field and giving horses some weeks well deserved vacation ❤️🐴😊
Learning- rain doesn’t change mood only at humans, Gettina has been standing on the field in the rain for days, competing on wet sand and even on an evening of a day full of rain. She just didn’t feel it that day and that is Ok. It makes no sense to punish horse for that, they know what they feel and why they feel like that.
Respect that ❤️😊🙏🐴
We are the voice of our horses ❤️
