I really enjoyed the clinic with Andrew Hoy
My eventing season is about to officially start and I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve again. I will admit it does make me slightly jealous reading all the reports on various events over in the east that started as early as January! Our eventing season in WA doesn’t really officially start until the end of March, with Capel CNC. It really is just too hot before then to do much else.
My plan is to take just one horse, my little black mare Daisy, to the Murray Pony Club ODE to give her a run around the ‘A grade’ or Pre Novice section before she tackles Capel CNC 1* the following weekend. I am hoping it will be a great start to the season, Murray is often a well run event with a great atmosphere about it, nice and relaxing. The following weekend at Capel I will also have Trumpet in the CNC 2* for his first run of the season. I am also looking forward to Capel for the same reasons – it’s often a great event and quite relaxed. The course is probably a little ‘gentle’ which is exactly what we need for the first event of the season. They have a fantastic oval where the dressage and show jumping phases are held, which has a great surface. Capel is about three hours south for me and just about everyone, apart from a few locals, will camp there. I’m sure I can speak for everyone when I say that the only thing people want after the weekend is a shower as the camping area gets very dusty! Also, Capel is kind of renowned for either being 40 degrees all weekend, or raging rain and thunderstorms, so I am praying that the weather forecast can give us a lovely 24 degree weekend (wishful thinking maybe!)
I am back down to only three in work as I recently sold the pony I had for training. He went to a lovely local family wanting to do pony club and I was very happy with the six week turn around – the pony came to me basically in paddock condition and out of work and in six weeks he was fit, had lost the ‘pony fat’, was in great condition and then he sold! However I am now a little ‘quite’ on the riding front but that has worked out well as I am teaching more than ever. I am lining up to hold a clinic hopefully in April so I’m looking forward to that.
Hopefully we can put what we have learnt from our clinics into practise at our first event
The last month really has been ‘clinic month’ with Stuart Tinney visiting (I believe twice in one month, however I only visited him once) and also Andrew Hoy. I have sent in a full report of the Andrew Hoy clinic which will be live sometime around the same time my blog is, so feel free to read more on the W.A.Y.E.R Andrew Hoy clinic by CLICKING HERE. Andrew is a phenomenal coach and just a wealth of information and I had a great time really putting the pressure on both myself and my horses to improve.
Coming back to Stuart it was great to have him back at this time of year as well for a tune up. No ‘fluff’, straight to the point, getting the horses to be softer and more rideable. Fantastic! Between the two coaches I definitely have enough to take home with me and work on, both personally and also with my clients to last at least another few months!
On a different note I am involved in a new committee in WA, the ‘Future Eventing’ committee who are holding their first event in April. Future Eventing is exactly that – a younger/ up-and-coming committee full of new people to the job, either young riders, or previous riders wanting to put something back into the sport. It has so far been challenging and I have learnt a lot, however hopefully our event turns into a success. The event is ‘Little Brigadoon’ – little as we are starting off by only holding the introductory grades until we all learn the ropes about how an event is run. I am the event secretary and together with mum (who is also the event secretary for the W.A.Y.E.R @ Brookleigh CIC) we have been working together to learn ‘ktrials’ (the online event organising system) to get our event up and running. It has already been challenging, frustrating, yet fulfilling. Hopefully I still feel the same after the event has run! If anyone is particularly interested in supporting our event in some way, please feel free to contact me via email on [email protected]
That’s all from me for now – currently WA is receiving some very long awaited RAIN, which is very exciting. I’m sure my paddocks are loving it. I will hopefully be reporting back in a month with some very big successes from my upcoming events!
Til then
Makayla
