Success for Sam Penn and a 21 dressage!

We have once again had a successful outing this weekend with a trip to Munstead near Guildford. This is a really nice course for the youngsters, with lovely ground and bold up-to-height fences that encourage the horses forward, without too much twisting and turning and changing of rhythm, improved further this year by running the xc in the opposite direction. First out on Saturday was Lite My Fire (Lulu) for the BE90. This little chestnut mare had her first ever run at Isleham where she was rather green and then unfortunately missed Tweseldown because of a bruised sole. Dressage went very nicely getting a mark of 32, which I think we will be able to improve further as she gets stronger and she followed this with a clear in the showjumping. We have spent the last few weeks trying to come up with a bitting combination to suit Lulu as although not actually strong she has a tendency to poke her nose out and try to run on when landing after a fence, however she also has an incredibly soft mouth which splits in the corners, even when ridden in a snaffle as we discovered when out xc schooling before Isleham, I have recently been riding her in a little bitless bridle in order to let her mouth heal, this she seemed to be very responsive to although the steering could be a little fuzzy at times so I have added a loose ring snaffle, and together they seem to work really well, it looks like a rather nasty combination, but it is actually not, and sometimes two reins will get in the way xc, but at this time she seems very comfortable in it, as proved by a lovely run accross country to finish on her dressage mark and win by 4 marks.

We returned on Sunday with my little superman Tickeridge for his first ever BE100. After realising that I had learned the wrong dressage test and hastily memorising the correct one (huge thanks to the kind lady who lent me her rule book) we toddled in. I spent most of the test trying to remember the route and in doing so rather left Tigga to get on with it, which may be the way forwards as we got a mark of 21, despite him suffering a sneezing fit halfway through, looking at our sheet later I found he had gained five 9's and even a 10! We followed this with a clear showjumping round, although he does now get a little onward bound and cheeky when he realises the fences are only 1.05. His cross country round was also really lovely taking on the slight increase in height and technicality without turning a hair, I also kicked him on more than on previous runs as his only real fault is that he can be a little too relaxed about the proceedings, but he felt wonderful so I was absolutely mortified to discover that we had collected 8.4 time faults. I questioned this with the stewards as I felt that to be 21 seconds over the time in what had felt like a good round had to be a mistake but I was told that everything was correct and so we finished second which was a little disapointing after such a super performance and the first time Tigga has ever been beaten. I shall now go away and time him over set distances to see if my feel for his speed is wrong before his next outing at South of England in April.

Also competing at Munstead were two of our 'old boys'. Rembrant III was 11th in BE90 section D on Saturday with a double clear and going really well for his new owner Louise Edwards and Coco de Cara was the winner of BE100o on Sunday with Cath Fowdrey on their dressage mark of 28.5, it was lovely to see them both looking and going so well.

Also this week we have had several outings for dressage practice, we were at home on Wednesday where Boundalong (Muffin) my new ride for this year, had her first party after a quiet few weeks having tweaked a muscle, it was all far too exciting and so she joined the two big boys Brooke and Smurf when they went to Royal Leisure to practice the 3* test on Friday, they were really good and I was delighted that Brooke has almost mastered his changes and half-pass although Smurf was showing off as usual, Muffin was still rather full of herself though but I hope she will have worked through it in time for Somerlry Park on Wednesday, a nice early morning drive to the New Forest for us as we have an 8.50am dressage. aaarrrgggghhh!!!