Well we took Irish Rose down to West Littleton for a Riding club ODE. We were only doing the Novice (BE Intro equivalent) class to give her an outing and to have some fun! The weather had been awful so we thought we were going to get very wet! But as it turned out it stayed dry for us and the rain had done the ground there the world of good!

The Dressage was a Prelim test which I learnt on the way down there! I was very pleased with Rosie's test. She has turned into a lovely little dressage horse in the past two years and for a while now she has been getting high 20's/low 30's. The test was very nice, one mistake where she trotted in the walk, but other than that pretty much her usual good test. I was very disappointed to see we had an awful score of 42. It was harsh judge, but even so I was very put out. Clearly I have done something to offend dressage judges recently!!! haha!

The Show Jumping wasn't very big but was quite spooky and she hasn’t done any for a while. However she was her normal careful self and popped round for a good clear. (Even if she did almost stop coming into the double--the fillers were awfully scary she tells me!!)

Finally the Cross Country, it was a decent track with a lot of ditches and steps! However she sailed round without any problems. Bless, she really enjoyed herself! I even shouted out to a friend as I passed them on the course! It was a nice change to go round a xc course and not be thinking technically about every fence. Like this is a tricky combination belv, you must have a short bouncy canter and you must turn very quickly on landing. I could just point and shoot and have a good time!!!

So a lovely double clear, that would normally have left us in the top three. But it wasn't meant to be, so we came 10th in the end.

XC Photos (Click to enlarge)