What would you do if you had conveniently parked the Semi Truck and Tralier, full of horses wedged between a fence/power pole/hedge/mail boxes/ nice garden/ and the name of a good friend's signpost … on a rather busy road?
Wouldn’t you simply back up, uproot the mailboxes (surely the people won't mind, the mail boxes were still useable, even if they are now sitting on the ground!) Your ever-faithful staff would get out the stud kit, climb the pole and undo the sign.
Gardens are over rated anyway so you would get the forks and roll those bad boy boulders out of the way, then you would basically floor the Mack backwards and it’s just the hedge to go (and it grows like a weed doesn't it?) so you move parts of the hedge and there you go, you are out of trouble! To explain all that, that’s the situation I got our team into at our first show of the season! It was a great team bonding experience….
The first few shows of the season have come and gone, with the Pre Training going from “how am I ever going to get on them,” to … “oh no, I’ll be fine, don’t lunge them before I get on…”, now they are all stepping up to training next weekend and I’m back at the “oh dear lord” stage.
Balmoral Izablu at his first start
We had our first upper level event over the weekend, with what now feels like our team of midgets that I’m riding. The average size of the team is 15.2 hands, and out of the eight horses I competed I only had one over 16 hands! The two little chestnut mares doing their first Intermediates were doing head stands over the fences, proving size means nothing and that they really are fiery redheads that take me for a ride, as long as I can stay on!
Balmoral Tangalooma (aka Bones or Prefect!) had his first run since Adelaide, attacking the 95cm warm up fence with rather a lot of enthusiasm, that we had to have a little conversation about! As you do in the sport of eventing we had a few interesting times on the cross country on a few of the horses, but that said I’m so excited about the team of horses we have.
The next few weeks is all about making them a little more rideable before our first main event which is Horse of Year. It should be quite exciting (hopefully in a good way) as the 2* & 3* run through the park, playing dodgem cars with all the other disciplines going on. I have heard a few other equestrians who are concerned about the control of eventers … “are they sure we are safe” but I’m looking at it as a great mileage thing for us and our horses!
In a quiet moment we took Soutie and Fee (our dogs) to the beach
Till next time, go Ride It Like You Stole It, I say….
Donna
