Roma Oakes' new year blog!

Happy New Year to everyone! We had a lovely Christmas and New Year - except of course for the weather! The sand school was frozen, the roads were frozen - it has been really bad. Fortunately the sand school has a lot of rubber in it so on most days there was enough of a thaw that the horses could get turned out for a little while to stretch their legs, but it wasn't possible to ride until 31st Dec - just in time for a competition on 3rd January. Also had a lesson on 2nd January - that was good but really hard work! Apparently my legs are wobbling about all over the place! Anyway - although the competition was just around the corner from the yard it was still touch and go as to whether we would be able to get the trailer to the venue. We kept our fingers crossed and managed to get to LaurelView for the Charity Dressage Extravaganza. Entries where down from last year but still £900 was raised from the Children’s Hospice.

I had entered for two classes; the individual Dressage to Music and a Preliminary class. The music class was first and we got Baker all 'dickied up' for the occasion with a garland in his mane, Christmassy bows on his bridle and stirrups but he was not having any of the spray glitter on his rump! He really objected so we decided not to press him about it. We competed to a melody of Christmas tunes and did some medium trot and half 10m circles to counter canter and he coped really well! There was a panel of four judges and we ended up with a score of 71.25% for 2nd place. The winner was a horse and rider who compete at Elementary level so we were very pleased with Baker and he behaved himself really well. We've been using the Organic Horse 'Ring Craft' drops which help with his concentration and they do appear to be helping him.

We then had to remove all the 'bling' and compete in an affiliated prelim class, we were first to go and scored 60.83% to get 6th place and our first DI point! Hurray. Then it was home, plaits out, rugs on and a big hug for him and carry out pizza for us. It was a tiring day as it was so cold but I really enjoyed it and it was great that Joan came round to warm us up for the dressage to music - it really helped.