Haflinger Show! It was brilliant. The first day was the dressage, it went terribly... My mum rode like she does when our instructor isn't there, so she got a pretty bad score. haha My brother had stage fright and forgot to ride Niels... Whoops.
My tests should have been amazing, there were parts of it where I watch and I tear up, especially some of the trot work. A lovely bouncy trot, wonderful self carriage, nice and uphill... but the judges hated it. All I can think is that it was because it was a haflinger show, and they didn't like that I was making him look dressage-y or something. NOT A CLUE! We had a lot of problems throughout the test because I was having my test called... erm, not particularly well we shall say. Niels was super tense because I was and we got the lowest scores we've ever got. Still got us 5th in the Novice. lol Hate to see how 6th's test went!
So much fail.
The second day however! I did a 2ft 3" show jumping round, my first ever sj class in my life. I didn't get lost, we knocked down only one jump, but refused a grand total of 6 times. XD I really don't blame him though, I'm not a confident jumper and he's not a confident anything! (Except eating. ;))
We did the Novice Ridden Stallions and Geldings (under 21s) and we came second last. *snort* Niels is not exactly breed standard, we think he's beautiful, but he's not the modern haflinger look. Plus he's 14! I didn't expect anything special, I just enjoy doing the classes. Niels went brilliantly, really easy ride (except for one minor napping issue in the first canter. "No judge I wasn't aiming for a 20m circle, an oblong circle thing was planned all along!") and we did come away with a rosette and a lovely photo! :D
Then the last class of that day was the accumulator. A jumping round with various jump heights and points attached to the jumps. We jumped mostly the small jumps, all cleanly, not a single refusal, and then near the end we went for it and jumped a 'big' 2ft 9" spread, the second highest of all of them. The only one bigger was easily 3ft 6" and had this box filler underneath it that Niels refused twice in the previous jumping round and was spooking at throughout the accumulator round. haha I assured him I'd never make him do that one. :P
The last day, I didn't do
anything. My mum took him in the Novice Handler class... we don't need to explain how we placed there! Then my mum and brother did the family pony class where they both had to do a show for the judge. There were 4/5 pairs and Team Niels came 2nd! So proud of that one. :D I warmed him up for them, so he was a super responsive ride, and then William hopped on and in the ring they went! Really nice atmosphere in that class. Lots of Mums and Daughters (fyi I'm too old to be the 'daughter' in the class), mums proud of their daughters and most common was daughters proud of their mums!
BIG NEWS!
I'm getting a 3 year old haflinger filly! She's called Oxnead Opal. If you fancy having a look at her breeding, she's by Norvic, out of Oxnead Ovation (by Alpine). She won the 3 yo filly class at the haflinger show, and has the nicest temperament. She did the potential RDA class and the potential driving for the disabled class as well, and did pretty well. There was a man-in-a-hedge-asaurus watching her whilst she was being ridden and people entering and leave the paddock we were in. Horses calling out to her... the list of things going on was endless. She was calmer than Niels, calmer about it than
any horse I've ever seen.
She's so willing, and so friendly. I'm in absolute love, and extremely excited for our future together. We were laughing yesterday about how when she's 30 I'll be 48!
I have so many plans for us, we'll be doing handy pony classes galore, she's coming with us whenever we go to any shows and I'd really like to do some serious in hand showing with her as well. It'll be at least another year and a bit before we can do any ridden shows of course, we'll just keep that ticking along in the background. She turns 4 in March btw.
I'm going to learn so much, it's nerve wracking, but exciting at the same time!
Here she is:
Not the best conformation shot unfortunately. She's got some coat damage on her hind that you can see in the photo. That happened when she was a foal apparently, she was kicked. She doesn't favour that side though, and the judges don't care about it either! We'll point the vet at the area during the vet check to be on the safe side.
Went to a Swallowfield Equestrian Centre today. My brother did a prelim test, and I did a Novice test. He wasn't going very well yesterday, I was hoping it was just because of his complete day off the day before, not even lunged or handled, which he hardly ever gets. He's like a baby himself, has to be kept busy! He usually goes better at shows anyway, looks to me for confidence, so he listens like a dream. The adrenaline creates a fabulous trot, but sometimes makes the canter strong, and the walk staccato. It all depends on the day with him though. :) It went really well though, he was an absolute dream to ride. Self carriage to dream of, we were going to be perfect and ready to enter the ring at our allotted time. Then we get told that the judge was running late, so I had to keep just walking Niels and then do a bit of work so that we'd be ready if he suddenly turned up... and he did. After we'd been in the warm up arena for about 45 minutes.
Despite being tired from the long warm up, we had a great test. No major cock ups. We got three 8s. One of them was for 'riders position and...'. Two of them were for the very beginning of the test, our trot down the centre line and then a 20m circle in trot. Then he started to get tired and fidgety, so he began to get heavy on the forehand unfortunately. We still got a nice lot of 7s throughout the rest of the test, including one for showing some medium trot strides. I really think that's coming along, it's one of the things that Niels finds most difficult.
We got 66.42% and came 4th out of a lot of really good horses, I really can't believe that we were right in amongst that lot!
