Spring has sprung!

Well it has certainly been an eventful few weeks in Barefooteventer-land. After the appalling dressage at Harden, I decided to take Jedi to a local dressage club event with Rose, the newly broken in Irish Sport Horse. Rose has just received her very own WOW saddle and looks rather fetching in it, if she does say so herself!

 

We had a middling day. The sun was bright and the mood was pretty jolly, but Jedi was very hot again and, after about an hour of riding, still pulled off a tense test. Much improved on Harden (we scored about 58.5% and finished 5th), but still very frustrating and worrying. I was convinced I was doing something really awful and was creating yet another Tux.

Rose was truly wonderful, however, just to confuse me even more! Considering she'd been ridden about 20 times ever, she was such a gem and coped really well in the noisy atmosphere. This was her second time in a dressage arena, even! So, she did a lovely test for 57.5% with a 7 for paces and scored herself a red ribbon to boot.

Needless to say, it was a very thoughtful drive home with the two of them as I kept going over my riding, my training, Jedi's reactivity and so on. I decided to simply cut all of Jedi's food out (which is incredibly hard to do - just try it!) and let him just eat grass for a bit. I reasoned I could quickly rule out diet if his behaviour stayed the same, even if he lost a bit of weight while that happened.

Imagine my relief when, only 5 days later, I had the calmest ride I'd had in literally months. He was almost lazy! The one thing that I'd truly managed to eliminate was the lucerne/meadow hay that he'd had for the whole of winter. We'd bought the big bales from a local guy and didn't know they were half lucerne til they arrived. I wasn't happy about it but didn't think it would be too detrimental.

How wrong I was! The horses had literally finished it up the weekend of the dressage comp and were eating only grass and hard feed (Micrbeet, lucerne chaff, Equilibrium and for Jedi, some Gastrocoat). I added Hygain Ice to the mix with no ill-effects. Now he's really quite lazy and calm. The relief is unbelievable. I'm even looking forward to our next event now I feel less likely I'll be thrown off!

 

We have two new additions to Dragonwood now - call it a bit of a window shopping moment gone awry! I went out to look at a lovely-looking broodmare called Heidi, and somehow ended up with Heidi AND her yearling by Ballycastle Cruisin' called Pocket. He's just a bit cute:

 

 So, there's lots happening in the next month. In a couple of weeks Andrew and Manu Mclean are coming up for a clinic. Hoping to take both Rose and Jedi for some lessons. I'm needing some serious help with trot/canter transitions on both of them. Jumping with Andrew is always pretty fun!

It's also time to complete young Timmy's foundation training and back him. He's three now and I'm quite excited about his prospects. He's growing into a really super young pony with very uphill paces and a real presence about him. Everyone asks 'who's that?' when they come to visit. He'll be up for sale in a few months, especially after I take him to Alastair Mclean's clinic in November. That being said, he's so lovely to have around, I won't be in any hurry to sell him!

 

 

Timmy in the rain

I'm also off to Albury at the end of September to judge at the NSW Pony Club Eventing Champs which will be so much fun. It's always such an honour to be asked to judge at junior events. These guys are the future of our sport and I welcome the opportunity to give them positive feedback when I can.

Then it's Canberra Horse Trials the first weekend of October, followed by Lynton - the NSW Eventing Champs two weeks later. This will be my first time competing at Lynton and I'm very keen to give it a redhot go.

All systems go for summer....bring it on!