CastleMouse
Well-Known Member
Well, kind of a bitter sweet day tbh, got no photos as I went with my novice pairs partner and the pro pics weren't that great so didn't bother buying them. So walked the course, and my god it was definitely trickier than the one on Saturday! Our class was the last of the day, but when we set off my partner (who I asked to lead at the start) had a refusal at the first fence a roller with his horse, as his horse has a "thing" about rollers, he tried it second time, his horse refused and reared up, chucking him on it, he wanted to do the course so jumped the mini tiger trap next to it, the start upset Castle a bit as he thought something was wrong. We then did fence number 2, a nice easy log, Castle flew it so did my partner, I was slightly concerned about fence 3, which was a drop with a skinny log, but again we cleared it well. Fence 4 was also an iffy one, had flowers in it, partner knew his horse wouldn't liked it so jumped dodgily over the small one next to it, and Castle followed. He flew the next few, went over the log and into the water no problem, over the upright on a slight slop, down the steps with the log at the bottom, and down into the sunken road and over a log, which was causing a lot of problems when we were looking at the novice singles, but we did that well. We did the next upright well, then next up was a roller, into water, up a bank, and over an upright, we both flew it, I was also concerned over this fence but Castle didn't mind at all. We then did the large steel barrel and pole above, strawbales, now again the rollers caused problems for my partner, even though he was fine at the water. So we had to bypass that as the horse was getting quite annoyed and we wanted to end on a good note, so we popped over the skinny log after the roller, and he went over the log whilst I went over the roller at the last. There were only 18 fences, but it was quite a tricky course and quite long compared to Saturdays hunter trials. So it was a rubbish day, but we got round somehow, and I stuck to the back as I wanted Castle to learn to have some breaks!
No idea how 4WhiteSocks got on as I couldn't find her or the photos for that matter, hope it went well for her though
We were probably eliminated at the first fence, but the bad start didn't help at all.