Well turned out the pipe needed replacing instead. So it was going to have to go to the garage...but then he decided it was too dangerous to drive so was going to get it towed...but in the end they managed to fix it on the yard on Friday.
Then as I had a 9am dressage and a 2 hour drive I proposed to leave the yard at 4.30am in order to have plenty of time for hat tagging and first-event-of-season-panics. My mum was not impressed and organised stabling so I was not impressed
given the weather.All turned out okay, we probably annoyed the hell out of everyone else staying there with the generator but it meant we had an electric heater going full blast so we were quite toasty. Getting up was hurrendious but anyway.
We stopped off the night before to walk the course. In a moment of panic, I entered the BE90 and instantly regretted it 2 days later when we went xc schooling. We had a stab at novice last year and it went very t*ts up for several reasons; Squirrel needed his hocks medicating with a touch of arthritus so he threw in a few stops, I lost confidence, he lost confidence and I managed to get around 100 faults in the xc phase at the BE1003DE at the end of last season so...
XC course seemed easy. Pretty small, a water early on but nothing at all I was worried about. Walked the SJ and was a little concerned as it seemed quite underheight and wasn't convinced Squirrel would respect it.
Got there for plenty of time and had a lovely warm up for the dressage. Squirrel was on his toes but worked in well in my little corner which for some reason no one else used..About 10 minutes before my test I took him nearer the rings with the other horses and he got rather distracted.
Managed to get his attention back and went to do our test. I was pleased with it, it felt accurate and obedient, no obvious mistakes. I felt he was a little on the forehand in the second canter but besides that I was pretty pleased.
Please note - these pictures are a terrible reflection on his way of going, Jason is notoriously bad at flatwork pictures lol!
I estimated 33 so was pleased with 31. Especially as it left us third in the section! Typically when we do a good test we have a harsh judge, I'm still waiting for my first score in the 20s affiliated! However his walk has clearly improved as we had a 7 for the walk and 8 for the free walk with the comments including active! Which was very pleasing.
I have to admit I didn't rush to my SJ, as warm up looked busy and I've always found they just take numbers rather than sticking to times...Typically they ran to times on Sunday so I got there with 3 before me. So I had to crack on which meant Squirrel was rather fast and enthusiastic in the round. But we went clear, only one photo as he looks dreadful in the others, legs dangling all over the place..
Then rushed to get ready for the XC as didn't want to be late. Got there with plenty of time and had a nice chilled walk. Once we headed to the start box, Squirrel realised what was happening and actually pranced and jogged for like..the second time in his life.
And then he just flew. Normally I have to ride fairly strongly the first few fences as he tends to look a little but not at all today. He didn't hesitate once, didn't falter once, jumped and landed from a lovely quick rhythm.
straight through the water which caused a lot of problems...I then had a moment of panic as saw fence 6 looming and had it in my head that the water was fence 4...but apparantly it was fence 5 so all was fine and I didn't go wrong.
corner
The last few fences we were catching up with the horse in front (they had a stop) so took a bit of a check as didn't want to overtake, which was lucky as we were already 30 seconds over the optimum time so might of had too fast penalties! Not sure how we went that fast as I hardly kicked on between fences which I normally do in order to make the time BE100, but he seems to have come back incredibly bold! He also only sweated under his girth so apparantly pretty fit too
At 15 he's finally got his head round this xc malarky! (He did only SJ until 2 years ago though).
Anyway...By the time I had sorted him after xc and checked the scores we were in the lead with most of the dressage up (and no scores that could beat us), so thought we better wait.
And good thing we did as we won! My first BE win! I'm so proud of him, he has come back so well and so confident.
Good one eyed pony!
We have another BE90 run at tweseldown next weekend then will come back to our BE100 debute at Munstead in a few weeks. Definately confident we will get established at novice later this season
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