LittleRooketRider
Well-Known Member
(and a spot of shameless boasting) 
Ok..so i've been meaning to start a sort of "blog" thing for a while, tbh just to keep a track of the progress with my new horse.
So I guess its best to start from the beginning...
At the end of last summer, afetr much umming and ahhing we decided it was the right time to consider selling my 13'2 homebred, Kitty (now 10YO). We'd grown up together and gone all the way to the nsea champs, dengie final, pc novice and pc intermediate SJ champs. We probably could've carried ona s we were butthe reasons for keeping her were selfish and selling her now we felt would give her the best chance at a lonegr-term home (and unfortunately money has to come into it as well). In October we went to see Roo and I fell in love...we bought her the next day. And Kitty found a lovely home with a 10 year old girl who dotes on her and she will probably take her all the way from 2ft to 1.10m just like we did.
Introducing Correze Z (Roo): 15'3, bay (no white ), 6yo, mare by Chellano Z out of a mare by Darco. A nice, lightly built warmblood (looks a bit like a TB) with buckets of scope and lovely paces.
Roo came quite underweight so we wormed hr and strted a high calorie diet and thanfully it turns out shes a massive foodie. (When I manage to get a pic I will show you 'the polo face'). It took a while to get to grips with each other, despite her talent she is/was very green and lacked confidencein herself and me. Plus although I ride lots of different horses (not mine) all the time this was something else that I needed to figure out.
It was a bit of a shaky start, but after a couple of months (probably a bit soon) w ethought we'd have a crack at some local pc SJ. It was a disaster! For whatever reason she decided to throw her toys out of the pram and we were eliminated in both classes! :S In fairness to her I was probably trying to run before we could walk, and the cousrebuilder had every spook and difficult line going in both courses.
We returned to the drawing board and knuckeld down to some rigorous work before reurning for a another go a few weeks later. This time we had a go at the clear round in which sh was very suspicious before going in to our class. We got around with one stop. Progress!! So we kept working away every week, building confidence brick by brick and ironing out the kinks..and back we went again..
I was so proud of my big baby! We were now on a wavelength going double clear in both our classes coming 4th in the 90cm (also a Dengie Preliminary round-qualifying for areas ) and then 2nd in the 1m! I was ecstatic
A week later we were very fortunate to have a dressage lesson with Emma Fisher (organised by PC) who was very helpful in working on getting her a bit more contained/collected, Roo is a naturally forward-going girl and we had over the last couple of months developed a very nice open frame, but with Emma's help we are now starting to develop this into a more rounded and collected 'shape', with better shortening as well as lengthening.
The weekend before last we competed in a school team at some NSEA SJ. I didn't warm Roo up very well (very small arena, lots of other people, me a bit nervous not wanting to let anyone down) so the rhythm was a bit sketchy/all over the place and we definitely needed to work on our balance around turns, but we had two double clears, team 2nd in the 90cm and individual 3rd in the 1m.
This weekend just gone we made a bit of a trek to the Dengie Area round, more as an opportunity for experience more than anything else. I walked the course and it was certainly the most testing course we had tackled together. This time we had a much better warm-up, I think I was a bit calmer and thinking more about what I was doing alongside having much more room. In we went with no expectations, we both kept our cool and had a lovely clear round on a course that caught soem much more experienced combinations out. We were through to the jump-off! I had no intentions of realy 'going for it' just to ride smart but not take risks. We ended up less than a second behind the winner, but in 7th place (2nd was 34.59s and 6th was 34.78s and we were 34.8) so very close, we didn't qualify for the final but I was chuffed with the day as it was. We ahd also entered the 1m class that followed, once again lovely round, Roo was really pinging and we made use of her natural speed to breeze around the jump off. We only went and bl@@dy won it!!
All in all a brilliant weekend. This weekend a nice chilled hack and canter across the farm (Bliss!) beckons followed by a lesson the next day.
In the (very) long term I would like to aim to be doing foxhunters by the end of next year, and depending how her introduction to XC develops, BE Novice, but like I say very long term! At the moment well just enjoy the work we have to do to get there.
Apologies for the great length, I have custard and strawberries if you like Have no fears Im hopeless at being organised so I suspect the updates will be rather infrequent. 
LRR. x
Ok..so i've been meaning to start a sort of "blog" thing for a while, tbh just to keep a track of the progress with my new horse.
So I guess its best to start from the beginning...
At the end of last summer, afetr much umming and ahhing we decided it was the right time to consider selling my 13'2 homebred, Kitty (now 10YO). We'd grown up together and gone all the way to the nsea champs, dengie final, pc novice and pc intermediate SJ champs. We probably could've carried ona s we were butthe reasons for keeping her were selfish and selling her now we felt would give her the best chance at a lonegr-term home (and unfortunately money has to come into it as well). In October we went to see Roo and I fell in love...we bought her the next day. And Kitty found a lovely home with a 10 year old girl who dotes on her and she will probably take her all the way from 2ft to 1.10m just like we did.
Introducing Correze Z (Roo): 15'3, bay (no white
), 6yo, mare by Chellano Z out of a mare by Darco. A nice, lightly built warmblood (looks a bit like a TB) with buckets of scope and lovely paces.Roo came quite underweight so we wormed hr and strted a high calorie diet and thanfully it turns out shes a massive foodie. (When I manage to get a pic I will show you 'the polo face'). It took a while to get to grips with each other, despite her talent she is/was very green and lacked confidencein herself and me. Plus although I ride lots of different horses (not mine) all the time this was something else that I needed to figure out.
It was a bit of a shaky start, but after a couple of months (probably a bit soon) w ethought we'd have a crack at some local pc SJ. It was a disaster! For whatever reason she decided to throw her toys out of the pram and we were eliminated in both classes! :S In fairness to her I was probably trying to run before we could walk, and the cousrebuilder had every spook and difficult line going in both courses.
We returned to the drawing board and knuckeld down to some rigorous work before reurning for a another go a few weeks later. This time we had a go at the clear round in which sh was very suspicious before going in to our class. We got around with one stop. Progress!! So we kept working away every week, building confidence brick by brick and ironing out the kinks..and back we went again..
I was so proud of my big baby! We were now on a wavelength going double clear in both our classes coming 4th in the 90cm (also a Dengie Preliminary round-qualifying for areas
) and then 2nd in the 1m! I was ecstaticA week later we were very fortunate to have a dressage lesson with Emma Fisher (organised by PC) who was very helpful in working on getting her a bit more contained/collected, Roo is a naturally forward-going girl and we had over the last couple of months developed a very nice open frame, but with Emma's help we are now starting to develop this into a more rounded and collected 'shape', with better shortening as well as lengthening.
The weekend before last we competed in a school team at some NSEA SJ. I didn't warm Roo up very well (very small arena, lots of other people, me a bit nervous not wanting to let anyone down) so the rhythm was a bit sketchy/all over the place and we definitely needed to work on our balance around turns, but we had two double clears, team 2nd in the 90cm and individual 3rd in the 1m.
This weekend just gone we made a bit of a trek to the Dengie Area round, more as an opportunity for experience more than anything else. I walked the course and it was certainly the most testing course we had tackled together. This time we had a much better warm-up, I think I was a bit calmer and thinking more about what I was doing alongside having much more room. In we went with no expectations, we both kept our cool and had a lovely clear round on a course that caught soem much more experienced combinations out. We were through to the jump-off! I had no intentions of realy 'going for it' just to ride smart but not take risks. We ended up less than a second behind the winner, but in 7th place (2nd was 34.59s and 6th was 34.78s and we were 34.8) so very close, we didn't qualify for the final but I was chuffed with the day as it was. We ahd also entered the 1m class that followed, once again lovely round, Roo was really pinging and we made use of her natural speed to breeze around the jump off. We only went and bl@@dy won it!!
All in all a brilliant weekend. This weekend a nice chilled hack and canter across the farm (Bliss!) beckons followed by a lesson the next day.
In the (very) long term I would like to aim to be doing foxhunters by the end of next year, and depending how her introduction to XC develops, BE Novice, but like I say very long term! At the moment well just enjoy the work we have to do to get there.
Apologies for the great length, I have custard and strawberries if you like
Have no fears Im hopeless at being organised so I suspect the updates will be rather infrequent. LRR. x
