3rd July 2011 - Larkhill Unaffiliated 1m

We took Squirrel to the Larkhill Unaffiliated Horse Trials to have a stab at the 1m class as he sailed a beatiful double clear there a few weeks ago and finished 6th.

I took the time to give him a good working-in before the dressage - at our last Larkhill visit, I warmed up with no real intent or purpose which showed in our test - it was a decent enough test but the lack of purpose in the warm-up meant it was lack-luster and gave us an unimpressive 40 which had us sat in the middle of the class.

Taking this extra time meant I was able to settle him, get him bending and extending well. The test was one of the more complicated ones we'd done, involving medium trot strides and give and retake the reins in trot.

He produced a fantastic test, one of our best so far, but we unfortunately threw away some silly marks with silly mistakes. In the second canter he struck off disunited and I had to bring him back into trot before continuing, then he fell into his halt at the end, tripping left right and centre. I also threw away a couple of marks by not making my give/retake clear enough so we got a 5 for that.

Despite this, we ended up with a competent 36.8 which had us in joint third with second at 35.9 and first at 31.6.






The show-jumping was an interesting test. It was a simple figure of 8 course with the jumps ranging from under-height to well up to the 1.05m limit. There were 3 awkward related distances - mainly a big spread with a short 3 strides to an up to height upright, and a very short stride in an up to height double.

Out of the whole class, only 3 went clear, and thanks partly to Squirrel's honesty, and my new ability to actually let him do his job, we were one of them.








This put us in equal second with the leader on 35.6 so things were hotting up for the cross country. I wasn't massively worried about the cross country - the only minor headache it gave me was a corner fence as we hadn't jumped one yet, and the time as last time at a slower time I had 2.8 time faults.

This time, I kicked on and we powered on round and went clear. There was a sticky moment at a ditch before a hedge fence (I have a small ditch phobia) where he took out a stride and I almost went flying, but besides that, it was great. I was worried I went too fast as I kicked on all the way round, but it proved a good call as we finished clear and inside the time!





We turned out to be the only ones in the class to finish on our dressage score, and won!

We've decided to affiliate him, and entered Stockland Lovell BE90 on the 17th of July - roll on!