Stormy123456
Well-Known Member
Patch and I finally made it to our first event this season! Aston 100 turned out to be a flying start to the season.. 🚀
Not quite the flying start I was hoping for, but fly, we did.. until I flew solo into the bottom of the trakehner (how do you even spell that word?) at number 7. To really rub salt in the wound, we were sitting on a leading score of 27 at that point.🤨
Let me explain how this happened..
With my folks away I was helper-less and lorry-less. As I punched in my card details to BDWP, I didn't consider the logistics or how I was going to cope without a helper. Who was going to constantly question my ability to pack the essentials? Who was going to provide the fodder? Who was going to endure my endless yapping about how terrible this was, or how terrible that was?
Whilst I hold my trailer license and am relatively confident, I didn't bank on the (un)trusty Toyota being replaced by a bloody ginormous VAN the day before. Firstly, it doesn't have a reversing camera like the (un)trusty Toyota; for anyone that knows my reversing skills, you will understand that this is far from ideal. 👎🏼 If you can't see through the rear window and you can't see the sides of the trailer because the VAN is wider, how the frig are you supposed to align the ball and hitch?! Secondly, once we (George) hitched it up (with ease), the whole set up resembles a bloody TRAIN! It's enormous! 😳
Thirdly, whilst you can't complain there is an issue with space, you can however complain there is too much space. Packing the VAN was like one of those irritating games on your phone whereby you have to stack things in just the right way. Worried that everything was going to slide around, we (George) strapped down a storage box, stuffed it to the gunnels and bungeed everything else to the floor.
Macey was my saviour and very kindly acted as helper. The poor girl was sat in the front seat, wedged in by the prized mono-flap saddle and my beautiful long boots which were too prized to sit in the back. Neither the saddle nor the boots are as prized now; I'll come back to that later though. We arrived in plenty of time, enough time to walk the course for a second time (which in hindsight was completely pointless).
The previous day I had persuaded my sister and non-horsey cousin to bring our 9 month old Rhodesian Ridgeback (that's a dog by the way), for a walk with the promise that it would be a relaxing stroll. Turns out there was a hectic as hell BE event going on.. 🤭 I did actually know that Aston was holding a BE, but it hadn't really registered that we were going to Aston and Aston would have a BE on. Normally, this wouldn't have been an issue, but Zola's lead skills leave a lot to be desired and her concentration span is also fairly limited when a half ton horse is galloping past every two minutes. 🙈 Let's just say we walked it as fast as possible to minimise the embarrassment, whilst spectators and fence judges looked on in disgust at our unruly beast. 👀
Anyway, back to the day.. Patch looks fan-frigging-tastic at the moment. He is maturing into a much stronger frame and was absolutely gleaming. I on the other hand can never be described as gleaming, because I've usually done something daft like fall over in horse poo. 🤷🏻*♀️
Before my dressage, I decided to tape up my beautiful, prized long boots. They've recently started to unzip whilst I've been riding and it drives me nuts, so I took some advice and taped around the top. I'd like to say it's muscle that I've gained, but I'd be kidding myself, it's more likely the effects of too much vino and chocolate! 🙈 Removal of the tape lead to the removal of the beautiful brown colour and I now have speckled white bands around the tops of my (now less) prized boots. 😭 There was a lot of profanities at this point.
Why is it that I always feel completely out of my league in any dressage warm up? Guilty for completely zoning out and having a number of near misses with the competition; I am usually the one tutted at who can never manage to do a circle that actually resembles a circle. It would not surprise me if Patch considers himself a jousting horse in the dressage. 🙄 I blame this on never riding with anyone else, ever.
I was very happy with our test; I've found that the more canter we do, the quicker he relaxes in the trot work and the 20 mins warm up seemed to be just right. Cantering around the boards worked nicely, just coming back to trot as we headed up the centre line. A little tension crept in and we had an unexpected canter transition in our serpentine 🙈, but otherwise it was consistent and fairly accurate. Turns out Patch picked up a 27 (new PB!), closely following the leader on 26, which lead to an uncontrollable celebratory boogie in the secretaries tent, before realising how stupid I must look. 💃🏻 I am chuffed as he offers so much more in our lessons and I didn't put him under any pressure for fear of explosions.
Show jumping is my nemesis, but that feeling that I'm going to vomit down my horses neck happens less and less these days, my confidence is on the up and I've got a few more essential tools in the toolbox for adjustability. Our warm up was spot on, jumping just 3 fences and heading straight in. We had our canter, we hit number 1 right, then 2, then 3, then 4 and so on. He was adjustable, he was forward and he was pinging. We came out with.. Wait for it. 🎊🎉A CLEAR. 🎉🎊
Most people won't understand what this means to me, but we've been a sufferer of 4-faultitis (just faultitis really, because 4 faults would be good) for a while now. This has ****** all to do with Patch's ability to jump, but everything to do with my own ability to ride to a show jump. 😣
I then made the mistake of checking the scores, only to find out I was now leading. 🍾 At this point, it's pretty difficult not to think you might be able to actually win something, especially when Patch's cross-country is (usually) so strong. 🤨 Our warm up for the cross-country was also spot on, Patch was excited, had a good bronc (a good sign, he usually needs waking up), jumped two of the fences strongly and felt ready to go. As I entered the start box I heard the commentator talking about Patch and those dreaded words 'Heres one to watch' came across the tannoy. 'Gosh, no one's ever said that about me before' I thought; now I know why.. 🙄
The course wasn't particularly technical, but it was up to height. The only fence I was slightly concerned about was the trakehner at 7 after our little mishap last week. 🤐 As we set off, Patch felt on fire and so confident. He flew 1-6 brilliantly and I thought, right, were cooking on gas here. Everything's cool, we're going to bosch this. We got a good strong canter, I had my leg on, a slap down the neck to say we meant business and about a stride away from 7, Patch said 'You can **** right off if you think I'm going over that'. 🤬
That is the moment I sailed over Patch's head, landed slap bang on my back and saw Patch's tail disappearing into the next field at speed. 🚀 For the second time in a week, I've ran more of the cross country course than the horse, whilst every swear word in my vocabulary ran through my head. After Patch had lapped the lake a few times with his reins trailing after him, he eventually trotted up to me with the rubber rein running through his mouth, the bit banging around his legs. 😡
Impressively that is the second bridle he has broken in 2 weeks and those reins that were my recent Badminton purchase are less than week old. 😤 Oh how horses can bring you back down to earth with a bump. Upon closer inspection, my prized saddle now sports a few 'unique features', which include some attractive scratches from my stirrups. 😭Luckily, Patch is absolutely fine and appears to be quite fit enough.
Macey saw the ups and downs of Eventing and (surprisingly) announced at the end of the day that she'd like to aim Lucky at one which is exciting! I often help Macey with Lucky, so it'll be lovely to have something to look forward to with him. Had I have had the usual helper/driver, I'd have been merrily sipping on a Sipsmith Gin all the way home, however we made do with a cheeky detour to McDonald's for a commiserating McFlurry instead.. definitely not going to help the whole 'I'm too fat for my boots situation'. 🤫
So there you have it, eliminated, bridleless and suffering from a headache, but we did a PB in both our DR and SJ, which is a positive to take away from it. Now, we've withdrawn from Rockingham due to the beefy trakehner and we're off to find every trakehner to school over in the county - it's a good job we have so many XC schooling vouchers saved up. 🙈
In other news, Squires is getting on well with Will at Tanglewood; Patch and I are crashing their 'baby party' with some much needed ditch practise tonight. Here's a few stills of the SJ; I didn't manage to get any decent photos, other than the quite frankly, simply spectacular sequence of me flying head first over Patch's head at number 7. I've always quite fancied one of those funny falling images, but the length of that sequence would cost an absolute fortune.
Not quite the flying start I was hoping for, but fly, we did.. until I flew solo into the bottom of the trakehner (how do you even spell that word?) at number 7. To really rub salt in the wound, we were sitting on a leading score of 27 at that point.🤨
Let me explain how this happened..
With my folks away I was helper-less and lorry-less. As I punched in my card details to BDWP, I didn't consider the logistics or how I was going to cope without a helper. Who was going to constantly question my ability to pack the essentials? Who was going to provide the fodder? Who was going to endure my endless yapping about how terrible this was, or how terrible that was?
Whilst I hold my trailer license and am relatively confident, I didn't bank on the (un)trusty Toyota being replaced by a bloody ginormous VAN the day before. Firstly, it doesn't have a reversing camera like the (un)trusty Toyota; for anyone that knows my reversing skills, you will understand that this is far from ideal. 👎🏼 If you can't see through the rear window and you can't see the sides of the trailer because the VAN is wider, how the frig are you supposed to align the ball and hitch?! Secondly, once we (George) hitched it up (with ease), the whole set up resembles a bloody TRAIN! It's enormous! 😳
Thirdly, whilst you can't complain there is an issue with space, you can however complain there is too much space. Packing the VAN was like one of those irritating games on your phone whereby you have to stack things in just the right way. Worried that everything was going to slide around, we (George) strapped down a storage box, stuffed it to the gunnels and bungeed everything else to the floor.
Macey was my saviour and very kindly acted as helper. The poor girl was sat in the front seat, wedged in by the prized mono-flap saddle and my beautiful long boots which were too prized to sit in the back. Neither the saddle nor the boots are as prized now; I'll come back to that later though. We arrived in plenty of time, enough time to walk the course for a second time (which in hindsight was completely pointless).
The previous day I had persuaded my sister and non-horsey cousin to bring our 9 month old Rhodesian Ridgeback (that's a dog by the way), for a walk with the promise that it would be a relaxing stroll. Turns out there was a hectic as hell BE event going on.. 🤭 I did actually know that Aston was holding a BE, but it hadn't really registered that we were going to Aston and Aston would have a BE on. Normally, this wouldn't have been an issue, but Zola's lead skills leave a lot to be desired and her concentration span is also fairly limited when a half ton horse is galloping past every two minutes. 🙈 Let's just say we walked it as fast as possible to minimise the embarrassment, whilst spectators and fence judges looked on in disgust at our unruly beast. 👀
Anyway, back to the day.. Patch looks fan-frigging-tastic at the moment. He is maturing into a much stronger frame and was absolutely gleaming. I on the other hand can never be described as gleaming, because I've usually done something daft like fall over in horse poo. 🤷🏻*♀️
Before my dressage, I decided to tape up my beautiful, prized long boots. They've recently started to unzip whilst I've been riding and it drives me nuts, so I took some advice and taped around the top. I'd like to say it's muscle that I've gained, but I'd be kidding myself, it's more likely the effects of too much vino and chocolate! 🙈 Removal of the tape lead to the removal of the beautiful brown colour and I now have speckled white bands around the tops of my (now less) prized boots. 😭 There was a lot of profanities at this point.
Why is it that I always feel completely out of my league in any dressage warm up? Guilty for completely zoning out and having a number of near misses with the competition; I am usually the one tutted at who can never manage to do a circle that actually resembles a circle. It would not surprise me if Patch considers himself a jousting horse in the dressage. 🙄 I blame this on never riding with anyone else, ever.
I was very happy with our test; I've found that the more canter we do, the quicker he relaxes in the trot work and the 20 mins warm up seemed to be just right. Cantering around the boards worked nicely, just coming back to trot as we headed up the centre line. A little tension crept in and we had an unexpected canter transition in our serpentine 🙈, but otherwise it was consistent and fairly accurate. Turns out Patch picked up a 27 (new PB!), closely following the leader on 26, which lead to an uncontrollable celebratory boogie in the secretaries tent, before realising how stupid I must look. 💃🏻 I am chuffed as he offers so much more in our lessons and I didn't put him under any pressure for fear of explosions.
Show jumping is my nemesis, but that feeling that I'm going to vomit down my horses neck happens less and less these days, my confidence is on the up and I've got a few more essential tools in the toolbox for adjustability. Our warm up was spot on, jumping just 3 fences and heading straight in. We had our canter, we hit number 1 right, then 2, then 3, then 4 and so on. He was adjustable, he was forward and he was pinging. We came out with.. Wait for it. 🎊🎉A CLEAR. 🎉🎊
Most people won't understand what this means to me, but we've been a sufferer of 4-faultitis (just faultitis really, because 4 faults would be good) for a while now. This has ****** all to do with Patch's ability to jump, but everything to do with my own ability to ride to a show jump. 😣
I then made the mistake of checking the scores, only to find out I was now leading. 🍾 At this point, it's pretty difficult not to think you might be able to actually win something, especially when Patch's cross-country is (usually) so strong. 🤨 Our warm up for the cross-country was also spot on, Patch was excited, had a good bronc (a good sign, he usually needs waking up), jumped two of the fences strongly and felt ready to go. As I entered the start box I heard the commentator talking about Patch and those dreaded words 'Heres one to watch' came across the tannoy. 'Gosh, no one's ever said that about me before' I thought; now I know why.. 🙄
The course wasn't particularly technical, but it was up to height. The only fence I was slightly concerned about was the trakehner at 7 after our little mishap last week. 🤐 As we set off, Patch felt on fire and so confident. He flew 1-6 brilliantly and I thought, right, were cooking on gas here. Everything's cool, we're going to bosch this. We got a good strong canter, I had my leg on, a slap down the neck to say we meant business and about a stride away from 7, Patch said 'You can **** right off if you think I'm going over that'. 🤬
That is the moment I sailed over Patch's head, landed slap bang on my back and saw Patch's tail disappearing into the next field at speed. 🚀 For the second time in a week, I've ran more of the cross country course than the horse, whilst every swear word in my vocabulary ran through my head. After Patch had lapped the lake a few times with his reins trailing after him, he eventually trotted up to me with the rubber rein running through his mouth, the bit banging around his legs. 😡
Impressively that is the second bridle he has broken in 2 weeks and those reins that were my recent Badminton purchase are less than week old. 😤 Oh how horses can bring you back down to earth with a bump. Upon closer inspection, my prized saddle now sports a few 'unique features', which include some attractive scratches from my stirrups. 😭Luckily, Patch is absolutely fine and appears to be quite fit enough.
Macey saw the ups and downs of Eventing and (surprisingly) announced at the end of the day that she'd like to aim Lucky at one which is exciting! I often help Macey with Lucky, so it'll be lovely to have something to look forward to with him. Had I have had the usual helper/driver, I'd have been merrily sipping on a Sipsmith Gin all the way home, however we made do with a cheeky detour to McDonald's for a commiserating McFlurry instead.. definitely not going to help the whole 'I'm too fat for my boots situation'. 🤫
So there you have it, eliminated, bridleless and suffering from a headache, but we did a PB in both our DR and SJ, which is a positive to take away from it. Now, we've withdrawn from Rockingham due to the beefy trakehner and we're off to find every trakehner to school over in the county - it's a good job we have so many XC schooling vouchers saved up. 🙈
In other news, Squires is getting on well with Will at Tanglewood; Patch and I are crashing their 'baby party' with some much needed ditch practise tonight. Here's a few stills of the SJ; I didn't manage to get any decent photos, other than the quite frankly, simply spectacular sequence of me flying head first over Patch's head at number 7. I've always quite fancied one of those funny falling images, but the length of that sequence would cost an absolute fortune.
