TheMule
Well-Known Member
Anyone that has followed my progress on the 3/4yr old and now 5/6yr old threads will be familiar with Nova who is my homebred 5yr old. We've come a long way in 2 years since I first started posting about him, but today was his very first competition. We've gone very slow and I think it would have blown his brain to try collecting rings too soon.
Anyway, today was the day- a local unaff event which is a perfect starter venue. He came out a bit bright in the dressage warm-up, there was some tail-in-the-air and very elevated trotting but he settled well and did a very sweet test where he tried really hard- the contact needs to become more consistent and we fluffed our right canter transition but the judge was in a wonderful mood because we scored 27.3. It was nice that there was a spread of scores from 19-44 in my section, but I'm not expecting a repeat of that score anytime soon ?
Quickly onto SJ and he just pinged around for an easy clear despite me trying to sabotage his best efforts by being overly hooky. I blame my dressage score- I've never been competitive after dressage before ?
We then went straight over to xc and he went round like an absolute pro. I was a bit worried about quite a decent size step up at fence 3 going away from the collecting ring through a narrow gap but Nova wasn’t worried. He gave me the nicest ride, he's just a total natural- he covers the ground beautifully, he looks for his fences, he's straight and totally rideable. I really enjoyed it, just like riding his mother ? He did have a little prop a few strides out from the water but a bit of encouragement and he trotted through no problem to finish bang on the optimum time.
He came 7th, what a
️ Onwards and upwards now….
Here's a video of the dressage and some xc for anyone super keen/ bored
Anyway, today was the day- a local unaff event which is a perfect starter venue. He came out a bit bright in the dressage warm-up, there was some tail-in-the-air and very elevated trotting but he settled well and did a very sweet test where he tried really hard- the contact needs to become more consistent and we fluffed our right canter transition but the judge was in a wonderful mood because we scored 27.3. It was nice that there was a spread of scores from 19-44 in my section, but I'm not expecting a repeat of that score anytime soon ?
Quickly onto SJ and he just pinged around for an easy clear despite me trying to sabotage his best efforts by being overly hooky. I blame my dressage score- I've never been competitive after dressage before ?
We then went straight over to xc and he went round like an absolute pro. I was a bit worried about quite a decent size step up at fence 3 going away from the collecting ring through a narrow gap but Nova wasn’t worried. He gave me the nicest ride, he's just a total natural- he covers the ground beautifully, he looks for his fences, he's straight and totally rideable. I really enjoyed it, just like riding his mother ? He did have a little prop a few strides out from the water but a bit of encouragement and he trotted through no problem to finish bang on the optimum time.
He came 7th, what a
️ Onwards and upwards now….Here's a video of the dressage and some xc for anyone super keen/ bored
