Liz Halliday's mare JiJi is settling into training at Windura Farm with daily hacking, track jogging, and flatwork to correct a left-rein bias. The spooky, athletic horse hasn't jumped yet but Peter says she has excellent jumping ability, with plans to start in December. She's heading to Aiken in mid-January for mini-events.
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This is a video for Tammy Pollard and Liz Halliday and all the connections of Gigi. Well, girls, the. Your mighty mares settled in well at the farm here in Windura. You know, we sort of been gently chipping away to work. The first couple weeks was just a lot of hacking, a lot of just walking and getting, getting to know each other. And she was a little bit excited and fresh at the beginning, but she settled in well. And then our basic training sort of been slowly but surely increasing her sort of trot work on our. On our big track. And she's up to jogging on the track about 20 minutes and we, we sort of do that every second or third day. And in between those days, I've just started working away with her on the flat. Obviously she's not going anywhere near as well as she was earlier this year with Liz, but I've just started with sort of basic simplistic, straightforward flat work. I haven't even got sitting trot on her more, just trying to get to know her. She sort of leans a little bit on the inside rein both ways more on the left. So I've been sort of working away, doing a little bit of leg yields and pushing her away from the inside shoulder a bit. I love her, but she is a little bit spicy and a little bit spooky. She often finds the one place on the arena to spook at. So I've sort of had to understand, like, she's a. She's a tiny little bit sharp and she's got her own opinion, which I love. She's hugely athletic, she's very feminine, she's obviously a beautiful mover and very, very exciting young horse. I haven't jumped her yet, but from what Peter tells me, she's a crazy good jumper. So it's. I'll probably start jumping a little bit in in December once we just get her a little bit fitter and slightly stronger and she takes a bit to get settled in, but she's starting to take a breath and relax and sort of enjoy, enjoy the new surroundings. I think I love her type. Like, she just looks like a. Just a pure athlete. Beautiful walk, trot and canter and I don't know, she's nice to be around and she's very feminine and I don't know, there's a lot to like about her disposition and obviously I love her confirmation and everything like that. So basically, yeah, she goes out on the, the track every two or three days. She goes hacking every day for 30 or 40 minutes and then then this trot work. We've got this long track that has a bit of an uphill and a downhill, and I think this time of the year we're just more, you know, getting to know each other and building a bit of a bond or a partnership. I think we'll probably head down to Aiken in the middle of January or the third week in January. And down there, I'm sure when we arrive there, she's going to be wild fresh, like a lot of them are. And then by the time we get to February, I think she'll be settled down again. And she's a quick learner. I think she must have been on her treadmill before, because we've sort of been doing a bit of treadmill training with them all, and she got the hang of it pretty quick. So, going back to next year, I don't have too much of a game plan just yet, but my guess is we'll do one or two little mini events down in Aiken. There's a good little jumping show down there and I've got to get the hang of her jumping. And obviously her cross country will take her to one or two little horse trails down there. She loves the pond. A few of them were a bit skeptical getting in the pond, and Gigi loved it. She was racing to get in there and she marches around. You don't have to. A lot of them, you have to sort of kick a bit and tap along to keep them going, but Juki loves it. Anyway, girls, hope you're well. Liz, I hope you're hanging in there, mate. We're thinking of you. And you've got a. Obviously a lovely, lovely horse here, mate, so hang in there and keep pushing forward.
