Finally my new Racesafe body protector has arrived! YAY! How exciting, I can't wait to use it at Goring JON!!!!

My Nike Body Base Underlayer:

Sapey, our first event since knaptoft and our last JRN of 2009.

Well, we warmed up for the Dressage, and OMG he was going so well-- for us (he was still like 10 miles long but he was really nicely flexed through the body and in the poll. so I was very happy). Anyway, we managed to retain it in the test and ended up with 34. ---very happy better than those 45's we have been getting recently!

Onto the Show Jumping--the worst bit normally! We have been having sj lessons with a new trainer- a show jumper- Brian smith. He is AMAZING! Totally revolutionising belvs canter, and how I ride etc. has been going so well in our lessons. But it’s hard as I’ve only had 3 lessons and belv and I are both having to learn ''the system''. So we went in, and did a super round, soooo much better than our SJ has been for..well...ever. Therefore I was really disappointed with two down first part of a double of uprights and the last but it was sooo much better.

Well a few months ago my Gran decided that it would be a good idea to get her Tennis court converted into an Arena for us. So she went around lots of Equestrian centres/our friends that have arenas researching surfaces etc.

A few weeks ago the work started. Because it's a tennis court, it already has drainage and a base so it was a very simple job. The first stage was to take down the wire netting around the court and put up post and rail fencing. (Click to enlarge)

The next stage was to put down the sand base. You need specific sand because if you get your normal grain sand and you try and compact it into a ball it will fall apart. Whereas with this stuff you compact it and it clumps together. So along came the guys with the massive machines and they spent all day putting down huge amounts of sand and rolling and compacting it.

The final main stage was to put the surface on. There are lots of different surfaces with many different properties. What my gran eventually chose was a mixture of rubber, felt and other foamy bits and bobs. Here it is:

The finishing touches..
Having ridden in the school we found it to be incredibly deep, so when they came back to put the concrete entrance in they gave it some more rolling. Basically the arena will take time to settle and bed in and so the more we ride in it the quicker that will happen. But it's a vicious circle at the moment as it's hard to ride in!
We also bought some arena markers- A, K, E, H, C, M, B, F

So, we got Jay (grans Gardner) to put up the letter plates and here is the final result:

So we had our saddler from The Horse Boutique out today to fit Belvedere for a new Dressage saddle. We had a few reasons for this:

1) His current saddle slips very badly to the right no matter who rides in it.
2) I want a good quality smart leather dressage saddle now that i'm not growing much and i'm doing some international (CIC/CCI) competitions!
3) I will *hopefully* get a decent amount of money from my parents for my GCSE's so I will put all of that towards the cost of the saddle!

So meet my Albion K2 with Genesis tree saddle:

Well, it was Foxcote Unaffiliated Pre Novice on Tuesday! It had the potential to be a very very bad day because a) Ross can nap and refuse to do anything and b) Rosie hasn't competed at this height for a while because she doesn't have much confidence at the moment so we would easily have been eliminated in the SJ!!

Well I got there to do my Dressage on Rosie at 1:30, she did a very nice test so I hoped we would get a good mark! We got 34.4 which was fairly good in the section but I was a bit disappointed with. It turns out the judge wanted her to work more from behind...
I then had a THREE Hour wait before Ross' Dressage. So we walked the course in the scorching heat and had ice creams!
Ross wasn't feeling very obliging when I warmed up and the test was horrible to ride. He fixes his neck and locks his jaw against you. However, the test apparently looked really good. We got 34.8 which I was very disappointed with. The judge even gave Ross a 6 for his paces and said ''correct paces'' which for Ross is in my mum’s words ''very naughty'' because Ross has the most amazing elastic paces. You literally would struggle to find better paces! Sigh!

I then jumped off Ross and got on Rosie for the Show jumping. It was an up to height course but mostly uprights which is good for Rosie's confidence. So I wasn't too worried. She was great over 1,2,3,4ab then I came round to a narrow style at 5 and I went for a long one which you NEVER do with her so she put another stride in and had it down. Totally my fault. Great over 6, the double at 7 was a bit hairy, 8 and 9 were fab. So four faults. Totally kicking myself!

I then changed quickly for the Cross Country and went over to the start. She flew a little hedge at number 1 and 2, backed off but jumped well over a large number 3, perfect over a wall at 4 and a box at 5. Popped down over another wall at 6, 7 was a bullfinch type thing which she jumped HUGE as she didn’t want to touch the brush bits!!! Then sharp left turn over 8 a large palisade. Popped down the step to skinny at 9, flew 10 and 11 a ditch log to tyres. Launched over the palisade at 12 which apparently had a drop behind that I didn’t know about and almost fell off!! Popped 13ab and 14 the ditch palisade. Launched over the drop over stream at 15, great over 16, hesitant over the 2nd drop stream at 17 and lovely over the last. Super clear!!

I then leapt off Rosie changed and leapt on Ross for my Show jumping. We went in and jumped off perfect strides over 1, 2 and 3. 4ab was a little deep, and the rest of the course was really good, so a great clear. It turns out the SJ caused carnage and out of 25 people there were only 5 clears.

Got back to the lorry got off and changed AGAIN and took him Cross Country. It was fabulous. No napping, no hanging, just lovely round he was really enjoying himself! Super over everything, no dodgy moments at all. So he got an awesome double clear!

Results!! Rosie finished on 38.4 and was 7th and Ross finished on 34.8 and was 2nd, so two rosettes!! Unfortunately had I not been a Muppet SJ on Rosie, she would have been 2nd and Ross 3rd, Oh well!

Horseseekers

Well, Vanessa asked me to make www.horseseekers.co.uk a video that could go on Youtube etc to advertise Horseseekers, and in return she would pay for one of my BSJA entry fees.
So off i went to make a video, and here is the final result:

In The Field Countrywear

My new Jodphurs have finally reached David from France and so he is in the process of sending them on to me. Fingers crossed they will be with me soon!
Hopefully the emboridered rug and numnah that he is kindly providing will also be finished and sent on soon!

Maxavita

Maxavita's sponsorship program has been taken over by Holly Reeve and i look forward to working with her to promote Maxavita to it's maximum potential. I continue to use the Pernamax tablets with Belvedere and they seem to be working well.

Potential New Sponsor

www.forestfarmacy.com have advertised that they are seeking riders to join their Organic Horse Performance Squad, so I applied with my KJ Eventing partner Jonathan and we have been shortlisted. So we wait a call on Monday to see if we have managed to gain another Sponsor. Fingers Crossed!!

I wrote a new article for my sponsors (Vanessa's) website Horseseekers on the Trials and Tribulations of Eventing!

Click on the image to read the article and browse the Horseseekers site!

Well we warmed up for the Dressage okay, went in and did a fair test. Nothing fancy, nothing wrong, and reasonably flexed through the poll and through his body.
Ended up with 35 which at BE I would have been ecstatic about, but at pony club I was a bit disappointed with. But not bad,  and not unhappy with it. It was a fair mark. Mainly 6's and 7's with one 8.

The Show Jumping I was crapping myself. It was fairly large and a VERY technical course. The warm up was DISGUSTING, and we only had his smaller studs in and he was slipping everywhere. We haven’t been going well SJ recently so he doesn’t have much confidence anyway, and although he has never worried about mud etc before, I think it threw him a bit..
We put the big studs in, but I feel the damage was done. Went in, popped one, and came over to two, not great stride but nothing bad. I didn’t ride 100% convinced at it though, and he slid in and stopped. Popped it well the 2nd time, great over very large upright at 3. Dog leg to the double at four, and the same thing happened, I think in normal conditions it would have been fine, but again as I wasn’t 100% after him he slid into it and stopped. Carried on and from then on I made sure that at every take off I was 100% committed and dug my spurs in and he went really well (just had one pole down).

So ended up with a cricket score, two stops 12, one pole 4, and 22 time.
So NOT GOOD. However, I am not too worried about the stops, as I could feel that he wasn’t enjoying it and he was worried. I am also very pleased that we only had one fence down- that’s progress!!

The Cross Country was mostly small and easy apart from fences 5 and 6. 5 was a large log at the top of a steep slope, 6 was a sizeable skinny on an angle at the bottom of the slope. So it was my main area of concern. But he popped the log beautifully, listened to me steadied on the turn and slope and straight at an arrow over the skinny. Flew round the rest and was one of very few to go inside the time.

Guttingly had I been a bit more committed at those two show jumps and just had the 4 faults, we would have been 3rd and qualified for the championships for the 2nd year running. But hey that’s life!!

I am not overly upset as I know the stops weren’t naughty or me totally missing the stride, just him not having much confidence.
Poor sausage!!

Well Knaptoft on Friday and Saturday, and Intro on Rosie on Sunday. Busy times!!

Well, unlike at Knaptoft it was nice weather all day, sometimes cloudy, but no rain! Because it had been wet the show jumping was moved onto a tiny arena and so some fences were jumped multiple times in the round!!

Well the Dressage with Rosie is normally much less stressful than with Belvedere but I was slightly concerned as she hasn’t done much recently, and hasn’t had a lesson in a while. I was also riding her in Belvedere’s dressage saddle as mum says it looks an awful lot better. However I needn’t have worried, she warmed up really well and was her normal super little self in the test. She’s so easy to ride in comparison to Belvedere. In the end we got 34.5 which is okay, but for her I was a little  dissapointed with as she normally gets low 30’s or high 20’s. However sometimes she does tend to get a bit over bent and we were penalised for this.

Pictures (Click to enlarge)

Show jumping she is normally very careful, the only worry is whether she will stop or not. She doesn’t have all that much confidence with show jumps and although we used to compete bigger she can’t really go above this height anymore, we just take her to have a pootle about and have fun. However, no stops, super little clear over an incredibly long and fairly up-to-height course. (14 jumping efforts). Afterwards we bumped into Rosie (Thomas) again who we see competing regularly and seem to be following around at the moment. She said Rosie looked lovely!

Pictures (Click to enlarge)

The cross country was very short course, 16 jumps and 5 of them were hedges!!!!! The hedges were all quite a reasonable height and this is the best part, she doesn’t like hedges. She won’t go anywhere near a hedge out hunting because she has had too many bad experiences falling in ditches behind hedges (she doesn’t have a big spread). However these all had rails in so I wasn’t too concerned, as when they have rails and flags she trusts them more!!

So popped the first and down to the first hedge, which she jumped HUGE, and didn’t touch a twig. lol. poked over three that was very spooky looking, nice over 4 and 5ab, galloped on, flew the hedge at 6, 7ab was a very spooky TINY log down a slope, up a slope and over a TINY skinny log. Poked through that, launched over the hedge at 8, okay through 9ab, nice over hedge at 10. Popped the tyres at 11 and small log at 12, flew hedge at 13. Popped over log before water at 14, trotted through the water at 15ab, and beautifully over the last PN ditch palisade at 16. And then cantered through the finish (for some reason I didn’t think they were timing it...)

Pictures (Click to enlarge)

Turns out they were timing it and I picked up 0.8 time pens which really annoyed me as had I not been so dense I wouldn’t have got them. Turns out they didn’t matter and we came 3rd. Bless her!!

Well, my first 1* very exciting stuff! I was always expecting it to go badly because our dressage and sj recently has completely gone to pot and I had just spent two weeks on holiday in the Alps.

However, he was superb in the dressage. I was incredibly pleased with him, he was soft through the poll pretty much throughout the test and he was very pleasant.  I wasn’t sure whether to wear my top hat and tails or not because A) its only CIC* and B) our dressage isn’t great! But Laura kicked me up the arse and told me to stop fussing and wear them, so I did. And I don’t think we looked out of place at all. He didn’t do anything wrong in the test and he actually did a rein back OMG, and he didn’t resist. Both his counter canters were good. He did a reasonable medium trot throughout the huge long diagonal and his extended walk was good. We got a 7 from one judge for it!!! I knew the mark wouldn’t be good though as he is very long and doesn’t use himself from behind yet. And sure enough 67.5- not good. But very happy with his way of going!

Photos from the dressage warm up (click to enlarge)

In the test:

Trot up was fine no problems there. YAY!

Right onto the next day and the dreaded show jumping! It wasn’t a very nice course, it was VERY long, 11 jumps with a double and a treble, also a lot was downhill or uphill on long strides. It was also fairly big and square, although in the photos my huge beat of a horse dwarfs it so it looks quite small!!!! He wasn’t warming up well at all and was knocking almost everything down. Didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. However I was seeing reasonable strides which recently has been our downfall ( I keep missing and making him stop). So did one well, two was nice, flew 3, fab through the double at four. Came around to five, downhill upright and got a bit close so that came down. Good over 6, round to the treble at 7 which he was foot perfect through. So all good up till here. Then everything went very very wrong. We got a bit under 8 and he was a bit lazy, that came down, then a bit flat over 9 and that came down, then I forgot it was a short three strides to 10 and got right underneath and he had no help from me, and that came down, then the last, fence 11 we drifted to the right and I took the wing with my leg. So FIVE down, TWENTY penalties. Needless to say I was pretty devastated by this. The last four jumps down! It had been going so well up till 8 with just the one fence down and then it all went badly wrong very quickly :(

Photos (click to enlarge)

Onto the cross country, well it started to rain very heavily and I ended up going XC in the worst conditions, over fences 1, 2, 3 and 4 I was struggling to see, the visibility was awful! Flew 1, 2 and 3 downhill to the three part skinny on a curve combination. My reins were very slippy and he is quite headstrong over the first 4/5 fences so our approach was interesting! But he was superb through it. Flew the hedge at 5, downhill (again breaking issues with the rain etc) to 6ab the very large drop to HUGE skinny log. (It looks tiny in photos,  like seriously tiny, but it’s actually really quite large!!) He flew off the step really well and popped over the log beautifully. We didn’t have a very good stride to the triple bar and we launched off a long one,,opps. Popped through the coffin well and galloped on over the steeplechase fence as 9, flew the ditch rail at 10 and down onto the very upright three horseshoes on a curve. We got very underneath the first and hit it hard and corkscrewed in the air. And then got fairly close to the other two and gave them a tap too. Kicked on up the hill and launched over a large hedge. Down to another horseshoe curve to a skinny barrel. I slowed right down on the turn to the barrel as it was slippy and he’s not very easy to turn. Popped that well and then 180 degrees back where we came from and up to do the double to corners. They were quite big and wide, and I wanted a nice shot in, that didn’t happen and I wasn’t very decisive about my take off point, so he launched over the first from quite a long way out. However it did then mean the tight striding to the 2nd one wasn’t so tight and we popped out very well. Even if my reins were 10 yards long! Galloped down to the pheasant feeder and then onto the water. Popped through there and then up the hill and flew the spread and last, finished 3 seconds inside the time and thoroughly wet. So finished on a good note. Overall fairly pleased, very happy with the dressage and XC and happy with the first half of show jumping, we will just have to forget the rest happened and not look at our record!!!

So big thanks to my groom (mum) my photographer (my brother) and of course Laura who drove all the way out here to support me! Thankies!!!!!!!!

We ended up 30/54 so just over half way, so considering the SJ, not too bad/disgraceful. Had we pulled a double clear out the bag (which at one point around April/may time could have been possible) we would have been placed (13th) and got two points. So could have been worse for first 1* if we forget the sj!!!