After a New Year in Yorkshire seeing in the end of 2017, I returned to the south and yet another wet start to the year.
Hoping that we would have a drier start to 2017 I was greatly mistaken. January proved to have me soaked through to the bone on many occasions, but I also had to battle with the frozen conditions that the great British weather through at us.
Being on the south downs has its many perks for great rides and fitness training, but being so high up also means that the yard stays frozen for a lot longer.
However training needed to continue with my plans for the year being big.
As always my main goal is to keep three happy healthy horses – adapting to their individual ‘special’ needs.
Nelson’s plan is to keep him ticking over. Competing occasionally and making sure he continues to be as cheeky as ever.
Ransom’s goal is to compete at the Petplan Area Festivals at PSG, as well as Advanced Medium. Neither of us have competed at this level before and it has been a huge learning curve getting here. We have to have qualifying scores at Advanced before obtaining two qualifying scores at PSG.
Lastly; Finley is aiming for a season of competing Novice. With his capability we may have a 1* in us for the end of the season but again; its not something I have ever done before and we will take each competition as it comes.
So our January training began with several sessions with Caroline Jeanne. She has been a huge help in getting Finley to where he is today after I started training with her last Summer. She has changed both of our techniques which has worked wonders.
These sessions involved course jumping, arena cross country; and lastly a trip to Littleton Manor Cross country course at the end of the month.
The ground was fantastic and considering this was our first cross country training session of the year Finley behaved very well and we tackled some of the bigger combinations including angled combinations and water jumps.
We also competed in our last combined training of the winter season at Felbridge Equestrian Centre. This had become a regular venue for us through the winter months and I would highly recommend it. It gave us the opportunity to run through some of the Novice dressage tests we would be up against this coming season; as well as jumping some decent 1.10m show jumping tracks.
Luckily our last trip there was a positive one – a lovely calm dressage test followed by a super clear!
Ransom also made his new year debut at Belmoredean as part of Step Aside Dressage. This was one of the many days of torrential rain; and as we were only competing in one test I decided to grit my teeth and crack on!
This was our first Advanced test in order to obtain our PSG qualification and Ransom did behave incredibly well despite the weather. Our tack was soaked and I was finding the reins incredibly slippery so it wasn’t as ‘together’ as I would of liked but he behaved and performed all the movements necessary.
We obtained our qualifying score as well as a first place; but I knew that we could perform it much better so I took a lot of positives from the day.
January ended with a trip away to Prague with my other half. It was a lovely mini break and we were lucky enough to have some snow. We visited some lovely sites and did a lot of walking, eating and drinking.
Whilst flying back to England I knew that what I had planned for later that day; and the following day would be the start of a very exciting 2017!
LG Eventing and Dressage 