What a month….. since my last post I have been very busy right to the very last day of July, what started as a very successful month also ended in one. Mr Winky has found a new home not too far from his home with us, when I was told the news of the sale of Winks I was delighted however what Mum didn’t tell me is I had been asked to break him in! I had my doubts as to how he would behave but he seemed to take to lunging and riding like a duck to water, after a couple of days he decided he had got the hang of it and wanted to trot off on his own but soon realised he wasn’t going to get to far with a rider on top.
Blue has been the highlight to the month proving us all wrong and lapping up and loving every minuet of being back in full time work. Previously he had been a lazy toad who much preferred jumping to stressage, this time around however he is a changed boy who is putting Dressage horse Percy to shame. After much deliberating we decided to take Blue to his first competition in two years! We pottered up to West Wilts for a combined training, the dressage (normally being our bug bearer) went smoothly and we awaited our turn to jump. I was shocked when the scores went up and Blue was in the lead, the pressure was on. Having not jumped competitively for two years we wondered how he would react, yet again Blue performed amazingly just knocking one fence to move us to second in a strong 20 competitor class. We have been so encouraged by his first competition we are prepping him in mind to enter our first BE 100open this year with him, Bicton looks a likely contender but we will let you know in the next blog where we aim to head next with him.
The last success of the month actually came on the first day of August, so I’m cheating a bit here. We took Wally to West Buckland For a BE100 open, this fielded a small amount of entries however lots of very classy and amazing horses were entered up. Wally was more chilled at this event posting a very good score for the test we performed, there was some odd marking and some fantastic moving horses had scores well behind me. Warming up for SJ Wally seemed a little tired than normal but we had done a lot with him in a short space of time up to the event, once in the arena he perked right up to post a fab clear even helping his rider out after completely missing a stride to the triple bar. The cross country course this year was much tougher than first looked at this year, last year it ran clock wise how ever this year it ran anti clock wise with some very substantial jumps for a BE100 open. Wally loved the course, maintaining a good pace all the way around the course. He really seemed to be enjoying himself, there were a few sque wiff moments but nothing to worry about. We posted a double clear inside the time, this meant we finished in top ten in 7th place. After this great run he is having a couple of weeks rest with light work before we attack a ON in September.
On wards and up wards.
