Home >Testimonials > Phase V helps calm “A” Circuit Show Jumper

As the 2005 show season slowly comes to an end, 21 year old “A” Circuit rider, Alex Rohling is finally enjoying some well deserved down time. This up and coming Grand Prix rider has been successfully competing each week since early May. At the recent Kubota Capital Classic Show Jumping Tournament, which took place in mid July in Ottawa, Rohling came out victorious in the $ 20,000 Open Welcome Stake, with his ten year old imported Hanoverian mare “Secret Identity”. “It felt great to have such unexpected success, my first year out competing in the big leagues. If you had asked me how I felt about the up coming season in April when I was just riding in my indoor arena at home, how I felt about having to ride against people like Ian Miller and Yan Candele, I would have never expected to beat them in the ring. My Goal was to do my best and gain valuable international experience so that I could one day fulfill my life long dream of being an Olympian”. Never would I have thought to have success my first year out”. “When you are young, you always look up to people like Ian Miller or Yan Candele, because they are where you one day would like to be, and when you see them jumping huge courses on television and then you go back and practice on your horse in your quiet arena by yourself, having only shear determination as your motivation, it can some times get frustrating and make you feel like you will never get there”. “But let me tell you from my personal experience as a young athlete”. “Anything is possible if you want it bad enough, just work hard and you will get there”.

When you are riding it is tough to have someone there all the time to watch you and give you good feedback. In fact 90% of the time I don’t have anyone there to help me at all. So you have to be very disciplined and hard on yourself, if you want to keep progressing to the next level. When I ride, I am very strict and always ride with a goal in mind. I also ask myself questions like: Is my horse straight? How is my position? Is my horse in a proper frame? When I compress her canter, does she keep her shape? Things like that, if you find yourself asking questions and realizing that you or your horse are not doing them properly then work on them until you are, that’s all it is.

After having worked really hard all winter, I still had some problems that I was not quite happy with, and they had to do with my horse. Unfortunately Secret Identity is very high strung and very hard to handle, no matter what the situation. I found that she had trouble relaxing and focusing on her job. So I began trying different grain additives that promised to make her more quiet and manageable, but none of them worked. Then one day a representative from Embrun Co-op came into my barn and told me about Brooks Feeds program and products, I listened and thought about it but had no desire to switch my horse over, simply because once you have a type of grain that you feed, you don’t want to switch it. It was only after I explained the trouble that I had with Secret to her and compared grains, that I decided to give it a try. The problem was that the other grain had too much starch and sugar and wasn’t designed for the kind of work I do and the kind of horse I have. I will be honest I did not see a difference over night, but gradually my horse started to be easier to ride and more focussed. I am not saying that it was some miracle and that all of a sudden my crazy horse was all of a sudden a saint, but I did notice a dramatic change in her over all personality and temperament. I think that the way the feed affected her and my riding is that I can ask more of her with out her fighting me all the time. Before I spent most of my riding time trying to get her to relax, now she starts relaxed and I can spend most of my riding time training her to be a better jumper.

Phase five might not be a feed for every horse, but I certainly noticed a change in my horse and strongly believe that it has given me an extra edge in the show ring.