Well, a slightly mixed day, but overall, I am very pleased with my pone! Withington is a local one for us; the journey was only an hour and a quarter!
The Dressage was very disappointing. I haven’t schooled him/had a dressage lesson for over 3 weeks because of school and competitions on Saturdays, and it showed. Recently it has been much better (remember the 33 at Kelsall!!) But today, he was horrible. He set his neck with his head in the air, and refused to flex. Considering this, I was very pleased with his test. He relaxed considerably, and flexed very nicely. He didn't do anything wrong, and was expecting around 38. Obviously, I was then very disappointed to see that we had 41. Which was bad in the section. The judge took a distinct dislike to Belvedere. On one of his lovely canter circles that deserved a 7, we received a five!!!!
I was very nervous for the Show Jumping because it was mostly very up to height. With a lot of knockable uprights downhill off very dodgy strides! However, we did an immaculate clear round. I couldn't believe it, what a good boy! That’s 3/5 clear this season. Amazing considering last year the best I could do was 8 faults. Louise Skelton (whom we know quite well) also congratulated me on the way out of the ring!
I was then very nervous for the Cross Country because of the clear. I had also been told by Graham law that the striding between the two hedges at fence 6 was riding very badly. And although it walked two strides, he put in one. In the warm up I then watched Lucinda Fredericks have a crushing fall here. I was then thrilled with Belvedere because he listened to me very well, and popped through it foot perfect. He was fantastic around the rest of the course. And was very sweet and accurate over the very large log pile skinnies on a 180 degree curve in the wood. He also flew the MASSIVE table at 13.
Unfortunately, because I was being careful so as not to make a silly mistake, we had 6 time penalties, which dropped us from 9th to 16th. However, overall, very pleased, as we got another double clear and another point. Bringing his total to 9, and our total together to 4.
