Competition Report - Frickley (2)

Our second BE event of the year - and first one since Emmie was diagnosed with arthritis in both hocks - finally rolled around! I'm not going to lie, I was more nervous for Frickley than I have been for anything for a long time - just because what if she was sore and didn't want to jump, went quiet again, or wasn't sound by the end of the day!

Product Review - EquiAmi Training Aid

August Update

Hi all!

Just thought I'd pop on and do a quick update on how Emmie is doing (I'm also about to do a product review of the EquiAmi training system, so keep an eye out for that!)

Yet another setback...

So as I said in my last post, I was off to do a little bit of showjumping to see if we had conquered our speetley issues. As it happens, we hadn't! She was totally not with me, really acting like she had no desire to jump, she stopped twice and was just crashing through everything. I actually ended up having a little cry when I got back to the trailer :-(

Taking a bit of time to enjoy it again!

Hi everyone!

After my disastrous last event, I decided we really needed to spend a little bit of time enjoying it again. I was feeling a bit down about eventing and asking myself why I even bother spending all that money - not a great mindset when we've only done two competitions so far!

Competition Report - Speetley

So, our first BE of the year at Speetley didn't go quite as planned! I had really late times - second to last in section - which meant I left the yard quite late. I had planned to walk the course between dressage and showjumping, but arrived with plenty of time to spare to get her ready, collect my number and have a quick look around.

My dressage was at 4pm, so I tacked up and got on at about half past 3. She was lovely and clean!

Competition Report - Shelford UA

Hello, back again!

Today I was competing in the unaffiliated at Shelford Manor. Unfortunately they always run the first BE over the bank holiday and, being a zookeeper, bank holidays are some of our busiest days at work - so no booking those off!
I was really pleased to see I had quite late times since I was at work until late on the Monday, had just enough time for a ride and to clean my tack but early times would have made my life a bit difficult! I was able to bath and plait on Tuesday morning before setting off about 10.30. Today was also Emmie's 12th birthday! I'm not sure she was too impressed by beign dragged out the field for a 8.30am bath as her birthday treat...

Just an excuse to show off some photos :)

Hi everyone! Hope you're good! Emmie and I are doing great and I'm really excited to kick start our season next week.

Getting excited to start my season!

Hi all! I've not posted recently, mostly due to not getting up to anything interesting, but I'll do a quick overview of what we've been doing in the past month while getting ready to start eventing!

Product Review - Sprenger Novocontact Bit

I have been trialling the Sprenger double jointed Novocontact Eggbutt bit for the last month from The Horse Bit Shop, and thought I'd write up a quick review. When I was deciding whether to try this bit or not, I found it quite frustrating that I couldn't find much feedback on it, or even particularly good pictures of the shape of the mouthpiece. Hopefully this will help some others! 

We are ulcer free!

So I have some fantastic news to report today  - Emmie went for a re-scope last week and they couldn't find a single ulcer! Everyone was very shocked, especially as just four weeks ago she had gained a new ulcer and was getting worse, not better!

Our first BD outing!

Hello everyone!

We went out to our first BD outing last week, at Hill House Equestrian Centre in Lincolnshire. It was my first time competing there, and I thought it was an excellent facility  - we will definitely be going back! The weather was awful all day, but they have indoors in such plentiful supply that the warm up and tests were both inside - thank goodness!

Turning to the dark side of dressage... or maybe not!

I decided to enter Emmie for a bit of dressage this week, and the day loomed up so quickly. I was 90% sure I knew the tests, which is always a good start.

A few backward steps for Emmie

So Emmie went for her re-scope for her ulcers last week, and unfortunately the results were not quite what we had hoped!

On the road to recovery... hopefully!

As my last blog post was at Christmas (which seems so, so long ago - even though it was only a month!), I thought I'd just pop in to say a quick hello and update on my mardy mare.