Check out the big grin!
Well, it’s been at least six months since I have sent in a blog. Much has happened in that time. I’ve got a new horse to ride! His name is Chaka and he’s a 7YO TB and he’s not evented before I started riding him.
He’s now been to six events. At the first event, he was a quiet as a lamb, and was blissfully unaware of the excitement of cross country. He fell into trot in the warm up! Very different to Astro. However, as he went to a few more events, it became obvious that he found cross country very exciting and we’ve had to work a bit to find the right bit. However, I think we’ve got it sorted as today I completed his first cross country clear and under time.
This weekend I competed at the Wagga event, and for the first time in a VERY LONG TIME, we were in third place after dressage! I have been having dressage lessons (shock horror – the earth may have stopped rotating momentarily!) and have identified some bad habits, and am working like crazy to tell my brain that my hand is not supposed to hang onto the right rein like it does! So after deciding that I wanted to have a nice calm regular test, and discovering that if I take four times the recommended dose of Rescue Remedy and remember to breathe during the test, I actually can do it!
It was an AMAZING feeling to do a test and be happy with it – of course my reaction was that if I was happy with it then of course the judge would slam it. It seems though that miracles can happen! A rail in the show jumping dropped us to fifth, and then our cross country lifted us to 4th (we were 0.1 penalty from 3rd!).
Show jumping with Chaka
Astro is enjoying his retirement and he still gets his fair share of liquorice. He’s certainly earnt it.
John has maintained his position has chief travelling, photographing and general all around amazing guy as we made the last minute decision to go to the Adelaide event. We discovered on this trip how amazing Uber can be! Getting to and from the event was a breeze. We found ourselves enjoying a few Pimms and helping out our good friend Clint Beresford who won the World Cup Qualifier that was held on the Sunday, and then headed to the pub with everyone on Sunday evening.
Mack too has stuck by me as we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary last week, we celebrated by him getting permission to go fishing for four days and I got to go to Adelaide. We did go out to dinner too though!
Children and chicks
Our flock of chickens has increased – we have six new chicks – who are growing very quickly.
The school year is drawing to a close, and we’ve not yet made any plans for the Christmas holidays – we had thoughts of going back to NZ, but as we have family living in Kaikoura, we’d not easily be able to visit them, so we will wait until we are able to do so before we head over the ditch.
I’ve got a part time job, which is very handy in playing for all the things horsey related. However I still laugh that I will happily fork out $120 for shoeing but baulk at buying a pair of shoes for my children at half that price. Ben was fascinated by Chaka getting shod, as he hadn’t seen him being shod before. When I explained it would happen again in six weeks he was amazed. He’s led a very sheltered life!
I am heading to Wallaby Hill to help out this weekend – I’m not riding there as Chaka is still pottering around Intro, we will aim for Prelim shortly.
Until next time, stay safe and have fun!
