Firstly an apology that my blog is a bit late, work has just been mental and my spare time has been at a premium over the last few weeks. I am sure there are many of you who can sympathise with trying to work a 40 hour a week, ride and train with your horse as much as possible and keep family and friends happy – it’s a constant juggling act, I sometimes wonder how I get time to sleep!
My last blog I mention that Riley had gone lame and was just a bit under the weather which left a question mark around whether I would be able to go to Howick and take part in our first ever BE90. Fortunately all came good with the big grey lad and off we went to Howick. My “groomies”, Mum and my good friend Jean, came with me to lend a hand and give a bit of support.
We set off on what was a nice sunny but cold day, so much better than rain! I had very sensible times so arrived at Howick nice and early to settle myself and Riley and go and find the Dressage and Show Jumping and walk the Cross Country course. Most people had told me I would not see much difference between an 80 and a 90 course, these people were lying to me! Don’t get me wrong the fences were nice and the course was flowing but being a total first timer to all this there was a definite height difference in both Show Jumping and Cross Country! With some of the XC fences I walked my line to and from the fence but would not walk up to the fence as it just looked massive and I have learnt that everything looks a lot different when I’m up on board a 17hh horse, so I try not to get hung up on the size of a fence when I am looking at it from the ground. All this wasn’t helped with my mother going blimey Claire that’s a bit big – I’m like I know you don’t need to make a point of it! So much for a supportive support crew.
Bar the size of the fences once I walked the XC course I was actually, for the first time, really looking forward to setting off from the start box and giving it a go – which is a whole new feeling for me.
I got Riley ready for dressage, he was a bit of a toad for the first 10 minutes as everything was far more interesting to him than listening me, but I’ve been working really hard in my training sessions with Jo May on ways to get his concentration. Once he did settle and worked in very nicely and we went on and did what I thought was a really nice test, bar the walk which I know needs a lot of work on. Show jumping was a bit of an odd affair the warm up and course was on grass and Riley and I have never jumped on grass before, so I knew it was going to either go one way or the other. We warmed up ok but as soon as I went into the arena, his eyes went out on stalks and he just got so spooky and looky at everything, the first 3 fences jumped ok and then we had a horrid jump through the double, he then got disunited and wouldn’t come back to me to the next fence and he hit the top pole so hard it flew out in front of us, in fact I don’t think he even was looking at this fence and this all then resulted in a rubbish dog leg turn to the next oxer and he clipped another rail. The next fence had been quite influential as it had a spooky filler and went away from the collecting ring so I then overrode this fence which then resulted in a awkward jump over it we left the fence up however I lost my balance on landing and almost has an embarrassing falling off moment. We did stay together and jumped the last nicely but I felt so humiliated after this round, I just wanted to dig a hole and hide in it. The pressure of all those other competitors and spectators watching and judging you and your horse just got to me a bit and I had a little moment of “what the hell am I doing here, I’m just not good enough for this” go through my head. So off I sulked back to my trailer to get ready for XC.
Fortunately I didn’t have to long to wait before my XC round so less time to dwell on my show jumping round.
There were two rather interesting warm up fences for XC a small hanging log and rather large box fence, and guess what I hate jumping box fences, so I had to get my blood up a bit in the warm up and just get on with it. Riley seemed ok but I will admit I wasn’t feeling 100% confident when I went to the start box. We got counted down and off we went, I got after Riley from the word go as he jumps far better and is less spooky if I ride him in a very positive manor and he went over the first two jumps nicely, the 3rd jump he had a bit of a look at so I used some “vocal” encouragement for that, we then popped through the next few fences fine and headed to the ditch Skinny combo. We trotted to the ditch as I wanted Riley to see it, we had a little squiggly wobble in front of the ditch but he kept going forwards, jumped the ditch and we rode a good line to the offset skinny after it. The rest of the course including the big brush fences all rode nicely, we had a little bit of a weird jump 2nd to last but I think this was because Riley was getting tired, and we crossed the finish line and were made up that we managed to get a clear XC in our first ever BE90
Before I left I went to the secretary’s tent to have a look at the results we got a 35 dressage (which I was a little disappointed with as thought it might have been a tiny bit better as Riley was so well behaved), 8 faults Show Jumping but we managed to go inside the time and was clear XC. The 8 Showjumping put us out of the placing so I am now left with lots of homework to do and hopefully we will improve at our next BE outing which will be at Broadway in May.
April was always going to be a quiet competing month for us but we did take part in the Area 12 Riding Club Festival of the Horse Competition last weekend and Riley and I were part of the winning senior team so we will be off to Aston Le Walls at the start of the June for the Riding Club Championships. So I’m well chuffed with this as it’s my first ever qualification for anything.
So onwards we go, lots of practice over the next few weeks and I will try and get my blog out before Broadway to keep you updated with our progress
