Finally got to a show! Pony is lovely and sound, and feeling good about himself. :D He was brilliant, the best to ride he's ever been. Nice lot of energy, but in the right way, so I'm really proud of him!
We would have done so much better if it weren't for the stupid reins! We have a bridle that we only use for competitions, and we used it yesterday properly for the first time. Turns out the reins are super slippery and I couldn't hold the contact for more than a few strides. In the walk sections he kept trying to do free rein, but I couldn't check him to keep the medium walk so I had to push him on instead hoping that would work... so he jogged. In both walk sections! Argh... We got 61%, but that could have easily have been pushing 65%. We got a nice lot of 7s and 6s, but at least one of those 6s would have been a 7. The walk sections got us 5s, which was generous! At least we know about the reins for next week!
Anyway, long story short we came first! My first ever red rosette, and I'm mega happy!
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Niels is healing well! There's been absolutely no weeping or anything that I was expecting to happen, I need to get myself some of that tissue glue.
He is gradually losing some weight. We're measuring his girth and his widest, grass belly, points about once a week, and recording it. He's getting about 3 days of being ridden and then a day off. Two of those days doing dressage, and then the last day some jumping. Haven't been able to ride out because the ground's too hard, can't believe I'm actually praying for rain. Sacrilege!
We have a couple of competitions lined up before the Haflinger Show. Decided against going to Abbey Dressage, it's a bit too long a journey for his first show of the summer. We should be going to Swallowfield on the 10th July to do some unaffiliated dressage and clear round SJ. I've never done a SJ class in my life, so clear round is probably a good way to start. On the weekend after we'll be going to Solihull Riding Club to do combined training. So a bit more serious show jumping, the weekend before the Haflinger Show.
