March had finally arrived and I was incredibly excited for the countdown to my first British Event of the season.
I was supposed to have showjumping practice on grass prior to Tweseldown but the great British weather had other ideas. A week of rain meant the combined training at Munstead was cancelled.
Tweseldown was one week later, and we had prepped to the best of our ability, with Finley looking smart and excited to be going to a party.
But things don’t always go to plan however much training and preparation you put in!
Finley started his dressage test beautifully and I was happy with how he was feeling until I suddenly heard loud screams of “LOOSE HORSE” dogs barking and the said loose equine passing my arena!! This did not go down well with Finley and led to him getting very upset, tense, and leaving the arena.
Finley gets easily stressed, and upset by situations and their can be no consoling him at times. Progress was made; and we managed to finish the test but the damage had sadly been done but through no fault of his own.
His showjumping was quite strong but we were unlucky to have pole; and this was followed by yet another fantastic clear in the time cross country. Just love my cross country machine! I was pleased with his performance and this was a great start before our first Novice at the beginning of April.
In our four weeks between events we put in a lot of training both jumping and on the flat. I had also been debating about changing Finley’s noseband as I felt that the flash was not helping him at all. After much research I changed him to a Grackle; and after training session with Robbie Carpenter I felt he was going so much better.
I needed to face our dressage demons and put our new gear into practice before our next event so we attended the BD at Pyecome to compete in the unaffiliated sections of the Novice and Elementary. This was Finleys first go in a long arena and he behaved impeccably!
He was so much more relaxed and even managed a 4th in the Ele with a 67%.
Ransom was also attending dressage parties and returned to Belmoredean for another crack at Advanced medium, and Advanced.
He behaviour was much improved from our last outing and he warmed up beautifully…. Changes and everything! But annoyingly my Advanced was before my AM as I was hoping to use the latter as the warm up test but he was behaving so well I didn’t mind…UNTIL HE ENTERS THE ARENA!
So much has improved since our last attempt and his single flying changed were great but the 3s and 4s were debatable despite the perfection in the warm up! He also added in a buck and a kick of the boards for
Good measures but we still got a lot of high marks; so next time I will bite the bullet and enter our FIRST PSG!
The AM went really well with spot on changes and lovely lateral work. I felt it was his best at the level for a while and we came 2nd with 67.8%
So April will now have two firsts…. Finley and I first Novice, and Ransom and I first PSG. WATCH THIS SPACE!
LG Eventing and Dressage 