Reading friend and fellow blogger Makayla Wood’s post I realised I was a bit late in sending my latest blog in! Apologies…
A lot has been happening here, horses coming and going. Murph (Tempus Fugit) has been shipped off to Touchstone Farm, to be turned out and learn to be a horse, with a trotter and a retired polo x pony. He is enjoying himself way too much, as even I couldn’t catch him during my last visit over there, which is very unlike Murph!!
We also got a new logo created (above), and I can’t wait to start using it – just have to get my butt into gear and get onto sign writers and embroiderers.
We attended Wooroloo Three Day, with the inaugural Trade Village, that turned out to be bigger than Adelaide - it was an amazing spectacle of eventing. Ron Major from Pryde’s EasiFeed (the most amazing horsefeed ever!) made the trip over, and manned the stand all weekend. It was great to see Pryde’s make the trip and sponsor the CCI* class, build awareness and bring back some consumer confidence (after having a few ‘dodgey’ wholesalers, Pryde’s is now shipping direct to each stockfeed, meaning cheaper, fresher product for everyone).
Touchstone Felix during his dressage test at Wooroloo CIC2*
Felix cantered around his second Two Star at Wooroloo, leading after dressage, even with a few green mistakes. With some help from Jon Pitts we got him really fine tuned and listening and I forgot how sensitive he would be in the test! Oopsie. But he jumped great, around quite a tough track, just having one minor hiccup cross country and a lot of time, putting him out of the placings.
Felix felt great on cross country
Two weeks later at Dryandra he went back down to One Star for a confidence boosting run. I really wanted to make sure that the big track at Wooroloo hadn’t shaken his confidence and after all he doesn’t know what grade we are doing! Doing one of the best tests he’s done lead me to fall into the ‘wow its going so well, man this is kind of fun’ and a flying change snuck into the counter canter about three seconds after those thoughts. Silly mistake on my part, should know better than to not keep riding the test all the way to the final halt – cos we all learn that one early on in the jumping phases!
Anyway, Felix’s confidence boosting run worked a treat he dragged me around the cross country and ended up finishing third.
Bradley has been cantering around the lower grades. After realising he has been over faced cross country, he had an accidental run at a lower grade due to the original horse needing to be scratched, I opted to keep my entry fee and run Bradley. He was actually quite nervous, so glad he had the chance to have a low pressure run. Working with Jon Pitts and Sonja on his cross country and getting him to ‘take me’ more has been a great exercise – I feel like I am really getting the hang of him. He was originally bought to sell on quickly, but he is a very different ride for me in that he lacks any extroverted forward-a-holic attributes – so I kept him to learn on!
The stables at Wooroloo gave me the chance to proudly show off my sponsors
After realising that Felix still has a long way to go, I have also decided to keep him at home for Adelaide - I think much to my partners delight, as we miss out on a lot of social events with Adelaide in November. This means that the rest of my year will be focusing on learning as much as I can from each and every individual horse that comes through my gates, as well as continuing to work on where I need to be mentally (and physically) in order to get the best of my performances. I have been slack in seeing my sport psyc but she has also been busy, primarily spending her time working with the Freo Docker’s boys – and if their success is anything to go by, then I think I am onto a winner working with her!
Promise to be more on time next month!
