As I’ve said before my days are always varied – and today was no exception. I started riding early, which was a pleasure as it was a beautiful morning, so bright and sunny and amazingly mild, a morning to treasure. I then jumped in the car for a brief break to go with Jenny to look at some different window designs for our impending building project where we are making some changes to our house – our builder and architect kindly agreed to show us some different windows ‘in the flesh’ so to speak, to help us with some all important decisions – and in record time windows were viewed and decisions made.
It was then back to head off to Allenshill for some much needed show jumping practice ‘off the place’ with Coco, Hipp, Ricky, Sunny, Fin, Lala and Tommy. In summary they all jumped really well today so I was very pleased and hope I have many more days like it to come.
Tommy was rather fresh and clearly very excited to be out. He had one down in his first round, jumped clear the second time and was starting to relax a bit. I then jumped Lala, and then Tommy again once he’d had a break, and he was more settled again jumping clear. So I was really pleased with him. Lala also jumped well – she jumped two rounds and again like Tommy was more relaxed and less full of the joys of spring second time around.
Ricky was an absolute star (surprise, surprise) and won the gold star for effort and achievement! He does seem to have this aura of rather the yard prefect, or the child who is always coming home with armfuls of house points! He warmed up really well – I feel he’s matured a lot over the winter – and without jumping very much at all he was suddenly jumping 1m30 uprights and square oxers very confidently. He then jumped a really good clear round in the ring – so very pleasing and another load of house points to Ricky.
Hipp warmed up very well and went in and jumped a lovely up tempo round in the ring, so again very pleasing and he seemed to be pretty chilled. Coco was a boyo! Lazy to start with and not really off the leg and then very excited once he got going and got out of bed. He jumped two rounds and was more relaxed second time round. He will have benefitted from the outing.
Finn jumped well generally making a good shape over the fences. He jumped two rounds and again improved the second time around, a common theme and part of the reason for coming out today.
Sunny jumped really well. He seemed very happy in his mouth in the fulmer gag which I’ve been trying with him – a bit Jenny uses with a few horses and that we thought might suit him. He does seem very happy in it. He has his own style but seemed confident which is very important with him. He jumped one round (clear) – and seemed happy and so I decided to leave it at that. I’m going to keep bringing him regularly to keep him confident and build the partnership with him.
So all in all a very positive afternoon’s work! Long may it continue.
Cheers,
Bill
Posted 21st February
