Alison has finally managed to pin me down to doing my blog …
I think my last blog was December, it is now May - I am hopeless … but I do have a bit of an excuse. 2013 has not been a great year for Team Bates. A few months ago Matthew had a fall and fractured his femur, which has slowed down our year significantly and made my life very busy. Matthew is now finally on the mend and he has ditched one crutch. So it will be a case of getting round with one crutch for a little while and then hopefully he will be able to walk just using his own two legs.
Mathew's new leg
So my life has turned into riding breakers (something I said I would never do). Luckily most of them had been pretty well finished by Matt and he has done such a good job that I feel quite safe as does our head girl Kirri. I have also been very busy teaching and doing clinics and I have recently started teaching over at Terrey Hills once a week.
I haven’t really been out to too many events and it has not been a great year with the horses. We missed Berrima because Matt broke his leg two days earlier but I did manage get to Quirindi and ran a place in the Pre Novice with Gunbarrel.
At Sydney Three Day Event I was leading the pre novice class with with Gunbarrel who then somehow managed to get a puncture wound on cross country and was on three legs by Sunday morning so we had to withdraw. I did manage to win the four year old Young Event Horse class on JP Ned Kelly owned by Karen and Adam Mooney so at least that was something positive to come out of the weekend.
That weekend also provided us with Adelaide Hill’s first show jumping competition of the season. He jumped on the Saturday in the 1.20m (I had forgotten how hard he is to ride) and we had a couple of rails down which is unlike him. By Sunday I managed to get it all worked out and we jumped in the 1.20m and came home with a fourth place. It was good to have him back and going well.
We also did the test ride for both the 2* and 3* class at Sydney which was a good experience for him. To do those tests in that atmosphere is a great opportunity and it always teaches you something about your horse. He is definitely going much better on the flat which is what we needed to do in our preparation, hopefully, for WEG next year – getting our dressage up to scratch.
Adelaide is going to go more dressage again next month, where we are going to have our first two Advanced starts. My goal with him on the dressage front is to get him to Prix St George level and no I am not going to become a dressage queen, I’m just trying to become better at doing dressage.
Apart from Adelaide and Gunbarrel the team of horses is a bit light on competing wise, but I do have some nice three and four year olds, which will be out next year, so I will be kept very busy.
William at a Sandy Lucas Kids Camp - planking!
William has been on great form and rode in his first ever clinic at Quirindi. He had a ball and had some amazing instructors – Craig Barrett, Sharmayne Spencer, Jess Ray and Andrew Barnett. He has become very serious about his riding and wasn’t put off when he had a bit of a bath in the water jump when Benji, his pony, decided to have a roll. William just thought it was hysterically funny. That said he was worried about getting his new chaps wet. He is so keen that he thinks he is ready to take over dad's breaking in business but we have told him he has a little way to go yet. But he will be out and about very soon on his little white pony … watch this space.
William in his GPA riding clothes and Dyon chaps
We have also been very busy building our new cross country course. We have rented 25 acres next to Willow Park where we have built nearly 30 portable cross country fences ranging from Newcomers to probably 2*, (some of them ended up bigger than we thought). We are also putting in a water jump and a bank complex, which should make the wide variety of fences very appealing to lots of people. The course will be open and available for hire very very soon and we will be posting photos about our open day, so it would be great to have lots of people come along and use it.
Well now that you’ve caught up on our news I'll try not to leave it so long until the next time ...
Christine
