For the first time in a while we were arriving at an event in broad daylight, and even better, there was time to ride all the horses on Friday afternoon at Wandin Park! Having not had the time to do this for a while it was nice to familiarise the horses with where they would compete the next day. By all accounts Wandin proved to be a great, albeit very busy event! I had five horses competing over four different levels, which made for a lot of different dressage tests and cross country courses! Luckily the courses all followed a similar path, and I was quite pleased that I managed to walk all four in one go, and even better remembered exactly where to go on Sunday!Geisha was meant to be competing in the CIC 1* class, but we unfortunately found out at the FEI horse ID that her FEI registration wasn’t up to date. Having only just done it in October last year I didn’t realise it needed to be refreshed on a calendar year! The same thing had happened to 11 other riders, and so a CNC 1* class was made for us to allow us to still compete. Geisha had her A game on all weekend, starting with a PB dressage test where she got a 65% from one judge. She has struggled with this phase for so long so it is really exciting that it is starting to come together finally! On Sunday she jumped a very careful clear show jumping round, one of not that … Read More
Canberra Horse Trials
Having missed out on the entries for Tonimbuk HT but still keen to get a run in, we made the road trip to Canberra Horse Trials instead. With just Geisha and Hughie going, we took the car and float and drove there through the night on Friday, arriving at 3am in the morning! Luckily for me Andy did the driving and I got to sleep!Saturday was dressage day, and with just two horses competing it was very relaxing compared to what I am used to! Hughie did a nice test to start off, I was very happy with him and some of the work he did. Geisha was a little tense, but still did do some nice work in her 1* test. I was pleased that she scored above 60%, the goal with her at the moment! She actually got a 7.5 for her first centre line so we just have to work on getting the rest of the test to continue on that streak!Once dressage was done, we had time for a nap to recover from the late night, walked both cross country courses in one go, and then explored Canberra a little! It felt like we were on holidays, not at a horse event!Sunday was all the jumping phases, which started off with Hughie’s show jumping. I thought I had a lovely and relaxed canter to the first jump, but it proved to be a little too relaxed when he had it down! That is his first ever eventing rail and he wasn’t impressed, jumping super cleanly around … Read More
February Update
February has been a strange month, with a little less help at home than usual with just one groom working for me, and what seems like an impossible number of horses to get worked each day! My young horses have had to be put into intermittent work to make time for all the clients horses and my higher level horses!After a cross country schooling boot camp at Benalla and Mansfield for the eventing first timers, we headed off to Ballarat Hickstead, the first event of the season. I was very pleased with how the four horses I took performed. They all did nice dressage tests, Geisha did her best yet in the 1*. Hughie was a touch tense but still scored well in his first EvA 105 test. And Chuckle and Woody were both super cute in their first ever dressage tests! All four of them then went on to jump double clear rounds, a great way to start the season!The following weekend we headed to Shepparton for the NVSJC Summer Show. The highlight of the show was placing in two classes on the main arena with Hughie and Geisha who both jumped super. Geisha stepped up to her first 1.20m class in a while, and proved to be well and truly ready taking out 5th place! Hughie placed 4th in the 1.10m, a super result for such a green horse. The younger horses had a great time in arena 2, with Woody jumping around his first 104cm with ease. Chuckle showed some serious style in the 75cm and 90cm … Read More