Eat my dust MP! Weekend plans :D

Best of luck MP, sorry I can't be there this year!

Have fun XC schooling to all that are going (not jealous, honest ;) ), and I hope that everyone hacking enjoys themselves. Fingers crossed for best behaviour by your lab Bernster.

Lots of luck-wishing going on here for Borde Hill, Embo.

I hope competitions for Sarahann, LP, iknow, monte, EKW, Lev, maz, rara, HappyDayz, comet, and Cazzah (blimey, lots of people out competing this weekend) all go well and everyone has fun.

JFTD - how does one go about getting into polocrosse? Just, er, asking for a friend *cough*.

CrazyMare said:
I am green with envy. I have a day of dissertation writing and a day at work.
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If it's any help I'm still in St Andrews working on my PhD stuff, but couldn't run the experiment I really need to run as we're still waiting on ethics approval - potentially 9 weeks of work down the drain.
 
DirectorFury said:
JFTD - how does one go about getting into polocrosse? Just, er, asking for a friend *cough*.


If it's any help I'm still in St Andrews working on my PhD stuff, but couldn't run the experiment I really need to run as we're still waiting on ethics approval - potentially 9 weeks of work down the drain.
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In St Andrews? There's a place north of Edinburgh which would probably be closest, who are absolutely lovely and wonderful. I can probably find out details and put you in touch. If you're not normally in St Andrews, let me know where and I'll point you in the right direction. Or turn up on your yard with racquet in hand, proselytising and spreading the good word ;)



eta, I stole my friend's proper polocrosse pony this morning :D I "demo"ed on her before coaching PC, and it was awesome :D
 
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I'm not competing this week end but will be off on a hunt summer ride on Sunday which will be lovely. No early start, no plaiting, a few nice gallops and a nice tea afterwards - lovely
 
JFTD said:
In St Andrews? There's a place north of Edinburgh which would probably be closest, who are absolutely lovely and wonderful. I can probably find out details and put you in touch. If you're not normally in St Andrews, let me know where and I'll point you in the right direction. Or turn up on your yard with racquet in hand, proselytising and spreading the good word ;)



eta, I stole my friend's proper polocrosse pony this morning :D I "demo"ed on her before coaching PC, and it was awesome :D
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If the polocrosse place you are meaning is the one I think it is then it is a 30-40 minute drive from St Andrews.
 
EKW said:
If the polocrosse place you are meaning is the one I think it is then it is a 30-40 minute drive from St Andrews.
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By polocrosse standards, that's right on your doorstep :D I'm pretty sure there can't be more than one fitting that description!
 
Day 1 of the AF done. I thought he produced one of his best tests to date, no spooking, no tension & a lovely rhythm throughout. Sadly marks didn't reflect this and gave us one of our lowest scores yet, the top 10 qualify, we came 11th. Slightly disheartened and unsure if we will go back for the Novice tomorrow. He isn't really ready for Championships at Novice so even if we did qualify we wouldn't make the trip just for one level.
 
JFTD said:
In St Andrews? There's a place north of Edinburgh which would probably be closest, who are absolutely lovely and wonderful. I can probably find out details and put you in touch. If you're not normally in St Andrews, let me know where and I'll point you in the right direction. Or turn up on your yard with racquet in hand, proselytising and spreading the good word ;)
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Swansea area preferably - I'm only up here at the end of the world for another week ;).

EKW said:
If the polocrosse place you are meaning is the one I think it is then it is a 30-40 minute drive from St Andrews.
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I'm driving 30 minutes each way to get to a proper Tesco - distance not really an issue! :p
 
HappyDayz said:
Day 1 of the AF done. I thought he produced one of his best tests to date, no spooking, no tension & a lovely rhythm throughout. Sadly marks didn't reflect this and gave us one of our lowest scores yet, the top 10 qualify, we came 11th. Slightly disheartened and unsure if we will go back for the Novice tomorrow. He isn't really ready for Championships at Novice so even if we did qualify we wouldn't make the trip just for one level.
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That's a shame HD, were the comments OK, even if the marks were a tad on the low side.

I had a slightly frustrating one too - showjumping outing wasn't thwarted this time (not by outside influences anyway), so we went along to do the 80 class at Solihull. Warmed up early as misjudged where they were in the previous class and he went a bit off the boil, but still jumped well just before going in. Then we went into the indoor arena and he went very backwards thinking, I got him forwards before starting but he just wasn't having any of it. We scrambled over a couple and then I pulled him out. Went back out, jumped some more quite happily in the warmup, went back in HC and same again.

So that's it for him in terms of competition jumping. Despite how well he jumps and how fabulous he feels when he goes in with a positive attitude, unfortunately as soon as there is something that makes him unsure in the environment he just stops jumping, and I can't control the environment of every show for him. I said I'd give it one more go this year and I thought that everything was starting to feel more secure, but seems not. Ah well. Dressage focus for us now, and maybe without having to jump school we might be able to try out this polocrosse malarky :p

Instructed the midget mare that she will now have to be the eventing pony. Then I noticed she has gone bum high again - so that's some good news at least! Grow midget grow

Hope everyone else's weekends are going to plan
 
JFTD said:
Welsh Dragons maybe? Not sure where they train in Wales (and my geography in that part of the world is pretty sketchy to be honest!) but:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/Welsh-Dragons-Polocrosse-Club-486025378233011/about/?ref=page_internal
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They seem to do a lot of training around West Mids - they'll be the wrong side of the Wales and too north for me probably :(.

I'll try and persuade my RC to have a go when I'm back to riding fitness :). All your photos on FB make it look like such fun!
 
DirectorFury said:
They seem to do a lot of training around West Mids - they'll be the wrong side of the Wales and too north for me probably :(.

I'll try and persuade my RC to have a go when I'm back to riding fitness :). All your photos on FB make it look like such fun!
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Balls. Yea it's difficult, there just aren't a lot of teams (and they're all in the bleedin' midlands!). But there are a lot of travelling circuses... sorry, coaches... who could come and do some stuff with an RC if there was a bit of interest. All it takes it someone to push a bit ;)

Thanks - it is great fun :) Just about to upload some more from today, lots of funny faces, from me and the pony!
 
DabDab said:
That's a shame HD, were the comments OK, even if the marks were a tad on the low side.

I had a slightly frustrating one too - showjumping outing wasn't thwarted this time (not by outside influences anyway), so we went along to do the 80 class at Solihull. Warmed up early as misjudged where they were in the previous class and he went a bit off the boil, but still jumped well just before going in. Then we went into the indoor arena and he went very backwards thinking, I got him forwards before starting but he just wasn't having any of it. We scrambled over a couple and then I pulled him out. Went back out, jumped some more quite happily in the warmup, went back in HC and same again.

So that's it for him in terms of competition jumping. Despite how well he jumps and how fabulous he feels when he goes in with a positive attitude, unfortunately as soon as there is something that makes him unsure in the environment he just stops jumping, and I can't control the environment of every show for him. I said I'd give it one more go this year and I thought that everything was starting to feel more secure, but seems not. Ah well. Dressage focus for us now, and maybe without having to jump school we might be able to try out this polocrosse malarky :p

Instructed the midget mare that she will now have to be the eventing pony. Then I noticed she has gone bum high again - so that's some good news at least! Grow midget grow

Hope everyone else's weekends are going to plan
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Not the best comments, seems to all be critisism which I'm all for it it's constructive but it wasn't. One of the judges has seen us many times and no matter what we do we don't impress her!

We're debating giving Choc a year or so off of competition and take him out when he's at Elementary/Medium as the judges just don't seem to like him at this level.
 
Bums to the disappointing days :(

I rather over committed myself today but got ponies ridden as promised, watched the 3* xc at Hartpury and schlepped over to Beacons with Kira. She's squealing at her stable neighbours and I'm putting my feet up with a G&T.

May as well go back for the novice, HD? We're definitely not champ standard at advanced medium but it's all good practice ;)
 
HappyDayz said:
Not the best comments, seems to all be critisism which I'm all for it it's constructive but it wasn't. One of the judges has seen us many times and no matter what we do we don't impress her!

We're debating giving Choc a year or so off of competition and take him out when he's at Elementary/Medium as the judges just don't seem to like him at this level.
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Ah frustrating. Yes some horses are just too much of a work in progress to the more advanced stuff to give a slick performance at their current level. As long as you're happy with where you're headed though I guess it's just a decision between whether you find it useful to keep your hand in or could do without the distraction.

milliepops said:
Bums to the disappointing days :(

I rather over committed myself today but got ponies ridden as promised, watched the 3* xc at Hartpury and schlepped over to Beacons with Kira. She's squealing at her stable neighbours and I'm putting my feet up with a G&T.

May as well go back for the novice, HD? We're definitely not champ standard at advanced medium but it's all good practice ;)
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I should think you needed the g&t after having to magic more hours out of the day! Good luck tomorrow, hope Kira has her very best brave pants on
 
DabDab said:
I should think you needed the g&t after having to magic more hours out of the day! Good luck tomorrow, hope Kira has her very best brave pants on
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She was really really brave right up until she moved off after the first halt :o :D

Did 2 arena walks as we were there all day, did 2 warm ups, felt super brave, found her big prancey trot... and then reverted to terrified hamster and minced around the trotwork in the test.
But she got most of the changes :D and kept on trying despite being a weedy rodent and was good enough for 60% and 4th place, so scrapes through to the second rounds, lol!

She really doesn't cope well with the first test in an arena. I thought I could con her by doing both arena walks and 2 warm ups, but nope, she knew she hadn't been in there before and had to hold her breath so the monsters couldn't hear her coming :o

She's qualified for medium and AM at second rounds though so that will be 2 tests in one day... might possibly stand a chance of the second one going OK. Plus we've got 2 months to nudge the AM work along a bit further.

I felt a bit sad that she hadn't been able to show off her best work, but FB gave me a reality check this morning, that was only her 4th AM test and it's 2 years to the day since she got her first BD points so she's done OK :p

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Hope everyone else had a good weekend, I'm full of cold now so pass the lemsip!
 
Well done everyone.

My weekend was a mix of horsey and non-horsey. My Nan turned 91 on Saturday. She has been very poorly, diagnosed with breast cancer and developed a DVT as a result of the meds so she's had a rough few months so we just had a quiet little tea party at hers on Saturday.

I had to leave early as new horse had her first physio session at 3pm. Nothing horrendous was found, she's actually remarkably good considering the injury she had back in December, but has the obvious weakness in her quarters as a result. Physio said she thought there was a very smart little horse in there and there's no reason why she won't be able to start her dressage career by the spring if all goes well, which is what I had hoped for, so I'm totally chuffed. Have lots of work to put in now- long reining, polework and hacking, plus exercises to do with her in the stable.

Sunday I called for my friend who was doing an Intro test at a local venue.
 
Sounds good scats, and like you've got a happily busy few months ahead.

Well done MP, getting through to second rounds is an amazing achievement, even if she still isn't giving up her best stuff in the ring. Is it mainly indoor arenas that she has a problem with out of interest?
 
DabDab said:
Well done MP, getting through to second rounds is an amazing achievement, even if she still isn't giving up her best stuff in the ring. Is it mainly indoor arenas that she has a problem with out of interest?
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Not especially, we did have problems with indoors for a while but I kind of blitzed that with lots of indoor hire over the winter... now they aren't noticeably worse than any other new arena ;)
 
Fab result MP, even if Kira did get a bit of stage fright. If you're going to be doing AFs at Beacons regularly is it worth coming up and hiring the place with all the boards and flowers out? They usually leave them out until a few days later as people do like to hire the long arena. You can actually book and pay for arena hire up there online now, I'll send you the link if you want.
 
it's a 200 mile round trip/5 hours on the box on a good day, so not likely to come very often, lol :D

(should have gone to Hartpury as only 30 mins down the road, but at the time of entering Millie was going to Midway champs and it would have been too much over one weekend ;) )

Thanks though, she's like it everywhere, it's just normally she does 2 classes so this is really only an issue at regionals & AFs that don't have a warm up class. They seem to have gone out of fashion these days, not so long ago most venues ran a warm up class alongside the champ class. Ho hum, we'll keep on chipping away at it :D
 
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You've done amazingly well MP !!

We gave our jumping demons a light slap in the face yesterday. Not yet defeated but hopefully they are now cowering in the corner. Had a nice easy session at Milton Keynes with a Wobbleberry group. 6 very different horses and riders, which was an interesting challenge for the very patient instructor!

Finnegan, the diesel engine, showed everyone how to do it in the most efficient manner, using minimal effort and speed but he seemed like a happy athlete this time, moving forward and taking on the fences nicely. We had one wobble which was entirely down to me bottling it at the last stride, on a fence we've jumped loads of times before - annoyed with myself and felt bad for letting him down. On the upside, I know what the problem is (it's me) so that should be easier to fix, but I am struggling with my confidence at the moment. Never one to back off however, I've entered for Pacesham 70 ODE and off schooling there next weekend.
 
Sounds like progress has been made for most this weekend, well done all :).

We made it to Somerford with the carriage horse duo, both were suspiciously well behaved... Hmm but Skylla jumped some more fences and decided she likes running really fast :eek3:, mum braved riding baby speed-demon *ahem* horse though declined to jump her ;). Topaz was a bit quiet, hope she's not ailing for anything, but jumped nicely enough.

Skylla proving I cannot jump in a dressage saddle :lol:
[video]https://www.facebook.com/LeapofFaithDressage/videos/681866465332550/[/video]
 
AlexHyde said:
Sounds like progress has been made for most this weekend, well done all :).

We made it to Somerford with the carriage horse duo, both were suspiciously well behaved... Hmm but Skylla jumped some more fences and decided she likes running really fast :eek3:, mum braved riding baby speed-demon *ahem* horse though declined to jump her ;). Topaz was a bit quiet, hope she's not ailing for anything, but jumped nicely enough.

Skylla proving I cannot jump in a dressage saddle :lol:
[video]https://www.facebook.com/LeapofFaithDressage/videos/681866465332550/[/video]
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Yay, getting some air on a different basis :-)
 
MP I know exactly how you feel.
despite warming up well, and being at a venue he has been to before, my boy backed right off in his first test. he just didn't want to go forward and gave the nice new shiny white boards a good look. we very nearly didn't strike off into canter and he does this thing where he goes solid through his ribs and blocks me out :(
on the plus side it must have felt worse then it looked and we managed a respectable 66.9% in the prelim.
then in the Novice he was much more forward and relaxed, still lots to work on but posted a PB of 68.2%. :)
so some more points for our My Quest, and fingers crossed we qualify for the regionals.
 
Sorry I am never, ever posting on this thread again :(

First week I did so, horse totally blew it at a tiny hunter trial as he was (apparently) totally over-awed by the occasion and could scarcely break out of a trot despite extensive encouragement - I think he stopped at least once at each of the 26 fences.

Second week (in this very thread) I mentioned I was going to an eventer challenge at the same venue to try and get over his nerves - after posting I even swapped to a 50cm class to encourage stepping over from a halt/walk! - and it took me an hour to get him on the trailer, by which time both he and I were so shattered I couldn't be bothered to go and compete.

I love my boy and I am very proud of him (usually!) but I shall never mention his name again in Competition Riders :D :D
 
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