47 – Moving on to Tigger (December 2012)
Of course, while Lace was getting injured, having sex holidays and babies there were still endurance rides going on. And I still wanted to be riding them. But unlike when George had got injured I sort of had another suitable horse already – Tigger. But other members of the team had been doing pretty much all the work. Lisa initially and lately Kerry. And Lisa had just returned from the UK and was expecting to be back on Tigs. She had worked previously for one of the top UK endurance riders and had been head hunted to return for six months to help at the World Champs. Yep, the ACE team had a world class crew member!
So I felt awful, I wanted to take Tigger back and ride him myself after others had done all the work. And on top of that neither of them had other horses lined up. Kerry being Kerry didn’t leave me to stew over it for long, she had been happy to give Tigger to Lisa to ride anyway, so she didn’t care, and after discussing it with me undertook to talk to Lisa herself. Happily Lisa managed to pick up rides on some of Mark’s horses for the rest of the season so that was good. Lisa did ride Tigs at his next start as planned though, a new course at Orakei Korako.
At this stage Tigger had reached the point where he was good on ride day, often still a complete twit the day before (although generally not to the point of causing a scene anymore) but he could still be a liability in his pen. Only Tigger could show that amount of talent at cantering and bucking in a small, electrified pen! Due to this he would end up doing many more than his qualified kilometres at any ride, and this ride was no exception. However that may have been one of his last bad-yard rides as I don’t remember another performance quite like it, and certainly by the next season I remember him being good and us all being very pleased and relieved!
There were problems with the farm water supply and so the course was re-routed through the stream loop more than originally planned so the ride would be able to continue. Luckily Tigger had his friend Shimar there and so managed to cope.
Then came my chance to take over the ride on Tigs, I had ridden him in his very first two endurance rides (Dec 2010, Jan 2011) but since then had done only one 80km ride which was now over a year ago. And I have to say my first ride on him this time was absolutely horrible! Just Kerry and I going along the road together and I had nearly zero control, brakes non-existent, pulling, shying, head up, mouth open – ARGH! Now you must realise this was totally just a me-him thing… Kerry and Lisa had not been having these problems. But he is a very different horse to ride from Lace and I just couldn’t get him right that day. Luckily it was never that bad again. Now I warn people having their first ride on Tigger, “It will improve from here on as you get used to each other”, remembering that horrible day.
My first endurance ride on Tigs was coming up fast, 100km at Kuratau and Kerry had planned for him to go a bit faster. And after that was the NI Champs which was to be his first 160, also at Kuratau. Hopefully I’d have a bit more control by then!
