Looking after my horses is what I love to do
A lot has been happening at Bimbadeen Park in the last month.
To start with we welcomed a beautiful baby girl to the household, Olivia Cleo Rose. She is adorable and very very quiet! She has ventured out to visit us a few times at the stables but as she spends most of her time sleeping we don't see her too often. Shane has been a very doting father though and loves to give her a bath. She is also learning to cope with plenty of noise as the phone didn’t stopped ringing with enquiries about our event!
Which brings me to my next topic, Camden Equestriad. Another very successful event run by the committee, accommodating over 600 horses. For us here at Bimbadeen I'm not sure if this is one of my favourite events or the one that I dread the most! In the two weeks prior to the event I think we spent as much time at Camden building jumps, setting up dressage arenas and painting fences than we have at home riding horses. Fortunately Shane decided this year to only ride three horses (Moritz, Neo and Virgil). In previous years he has tried riding six, which is what he would normally do at an event and it hasn't ended up well. One year he even forgot to ride the loop through the arena on Novalis after he himself had set the fences up the day before! So it was a nice change to only have three horses to look after. Of course that didn't mean I had an easy time of it.
Neo went well at Equestriad and will now go to Melbourne for his first CCI3*
After making it through the dressage tests I went over to pull down the dressage arenas and help John Vallance build his show jumping course in the main arena. After that, it was off with the Chief Steward to marshal for one star trot up and bribe the veterinary delegates and ground jury with chocolate cake! The chocolate cake was actually made for one of my fellow bloggers, Charlie Brister, who celebrated his 21st birthday during Sydney Three day Event and, as I was unable to attend his party, I promised him a cake. So on Friday night after I had finished plaiting and packing the truck, I raced inside to bake a cake. Fortunately my mum is a very good cook and so with a quick phone call to her for the recipe I was on the job. I haven't quite got her hand for decorating but I think it came off quite well covered in M&Ms. There certainly weren't any complaints from the customers!
The chocolate cake ... sponsored by M&M's
Sunday was another busy day with plenty of cross country and show jumping taking place. I spent most of the day at the truck making sure Shane’s horses were ready to roll when he turned up to ride. I did however manage to sneak over to the VIP marquee and catch up with Shane’s family who had ventured out for the day. We also had a couple of the racehorse trainers who we do work for come out to Equestriad and check out what we get up to in our spare time. It was great to see them out supporting the eventing side of our lives.
The three boys were all very well behaved over the weekend. Virgil, who had an uncharacteristic fall in the water at Sydney, picked up his feet and went round clear in the CIC2* to finish second. Moritz and Neo were both a little fresh in the dressage but still put in reasonable performances and then cruised around the cross country course, which had caused a few problems for fellow competitors. They each had a rail down to finish third and fifth, a very good lead up to Melbourne Three Day Event.
Melbourne will be the final ‘selection’ event for the London Olympics in Australia and both the CCI3* star and CNC3* classes will be hotly contested. We are taking down Moritz and Neo for the CCI3* and Arvey (Taurus) is coming along for the trip. Shane doesn’t like to leave Arvey behind if either he or I aren’t around especially this close to selection, as every day counts. Arvey and Moritz are also best of friends and don’t like to do anything without the other one!
I’m hoping both Moritz and Neo go well at Melbourne. Moritz has put in some solid performances this year and if something happened to Arvey he would be Shane’s back up horse for London. This will be Neo’s first CCI3*. It’s easy to forget sometimes that he is only 7 years old! The three days are sort of like a little holiday for me with only three horses to look after. Although my fingers get a work out having to plait each horse three times in four days.
In between Camden and packing the truck for Melbourne I have also managed to keep my team of two horses in work. Capone had his first outing to a dressage day on Saturday. I was very excited to be finally taking him out to compete although I think he found the whole experience a little scary! I also took Walter, the big dressage horse and we had our first advanced start. I was a little nervous about it especially given that Niki and her mum Carol, who owns Walter, came to watch him go. It turned out to be a pretty good day Capone was unplaced but ok and Walter came home with a second and a fifth.
There is still a lot to get through before then though so I best be getting back to work! Hope to see you all at Melbourne!
