So as quickly as spring began to appear, it disappeared and back came my old friend the rain…. Surely it can go on for much longer, could it?! Oh but it did!
All that excitement and preparation for a dismal start – but a good dismal start I hasten to add.
Starting with Timmy, I was planning on him having a first run at Munstead in the BE100 plus. He didn’t run cross country that much towards the end of last season for various reasons, losing a shoe in dressage and then the whole lorry ramp falling off thing. For these reasons I thought a good confident first run would be in order and that is exactly what happened. After a week of sunshine the rain then started to descend on Munstead just as the event was due to start. I was fully prepared to be doing my dressage and showjumping in deep mud being last to go on the Sunday but the rain drizzled and held out leaving perfect going. Hats off to the organisers for doing such an amazing job given how wet everywhere was a month ago.
In the BE100 plus you do a Novice dressage test and showjumping and then BE100 xc. Timmy managed a test but controlled dressage to score a fairly respectable 36. I was pretty pleased with this as earlier on he had tried to catapult me into the lorry next door as I got on! The lorry park being right by the xc start didn’t really help his cold back case as tension makes it worse as well as the cold!
The show jumping went okay with just one down but he was very strong as clearly knew what we were there to do. The cross country is very straight forward and makes a good first run of the season or first run in general. Needless to say we were clear inside the time. I think my arms were a good few inches longer from trying to slow him down, I think keen would be an understatement as we could have gone around twice in the allocated time at Timmy’s speed!
The next outing came two weeks later to do the Novice at South of England. I had decided to take him up to LMEQ in Reigate during the week before just to jump in an out of the water and tackle a few skinies and corners. The facilities are amazing up there, it’s well worthwhile to make a trip to get them ready for an event.
The Novice at South of England is in my opinion very inviting for that level. It is a definite step up from BE100 but gives you a good start. Timmy has already jumped the Novice here a couple of times so I was confident after walking the course that he wouldn’t have any problems. I was again last to go in my section, which suits me as he gets up tight warming up for the dressage if there are lots of horses about. My test was a bit more complicated than the one at Munstead but I was pleased with the way Tim coped as although he lost some balance in places falling in patches of mud, he did everything I asked. Again it was a miracle SOE managed to run given the amount of rain we had had! The only mistakes came in one medium trot he lost balance and cantered and was a little against my hand in the rein back. The judges were also scoring pretty high so a score of 40.5 was not too bad.
The show jumping was cause lots of problems I think due to warming up on a rubber surface and then jumping on sticky mud. After my disaster of 5 down last year I decided to warm up jumping the upright on the sand a couple of times and then go straight in. This worked a treat! I had one fence down, I think only because the ground was so deep so I was very happy.
In the XC he was amazing, again he pulled my arms out as I was trying to keep him slow just to give a good confident run around. He stayed straight at all the skinnies and finished full of confidence in 12th place. Dare I say it but we may have to do that intermediate soon……. We’ll see how Nurstead goes first!
In other news, Gringo (pictured above) has been coming along really well. He is now out competing and even went xc schooling – hes such a super star. I have placed a couple of adverts for him so hopefully he will be sold to someone who will enjoy him as much as me.
Athene S, a horse I sold to Jo & James Donaldson went xc schooling at Munstead last weekend. I worked her a little in the dressage rings to get her used to doing a test on grass, then popped her over a couple of show jumps and then tackled the xc. She was amazing. Considering she only started jumping under saddle a month ago, she deserves a gold star. She pretty much jumped the whole BE90 course including the water and the steps and loved it. I really cant wait to see what she does later this year.
I'm off to xc school Socks this weekend so fingers crossed he’ll be as good as Athene and Gringo!!
