Sam- Chester’s back!

Ollie & I

Hey guys! I hope everyone has had a great Christmas and New Year!

Ollie striking a pose

But hasn’t this weather been awful? Hearing the news about all the flooding around the area, makes me feel very lucky not to have the yard flooded. I have not had a lot to do this month with the weather, and Christmas, but hoping to get back into the competition season with my first training session in Pibwlyrd on the 6^TH January, then a lesson over a course of jumps on the 9^th January with Ruby and Ollie to hopefully get our competition brains back in gear ready for the coming season. Our first show will be on the 10^th January which is showjumping, in Pibwlyrd College with Towy Valley RC.

Over Christmas, I have done a lot of work with ollie, jumping him over lots of different colour fillers and water-trays. This should give us a confident start to the 2016 competition season, I’m looking forward to getting the horses fitter again and clipping the hairy winter coats off.

Ruby having some fun

This season, I plan to BSJA Ruby, who excelled herself jumping double clears in nearly every unaffiliated show she done, including a double clear for second place in the Moor Farm area qualifiers. She done her first BSJA at the end of the season, so gave us a taste of what she’d be like jumping at British Novice heights as a warm up. As she tends to get better the more we do, she had a pole in the British novice, and a double clear in the discovery.

Chester and I

I also now have Chester back in work who will be coming back in to competitions when he is fit enough. I’m hoping I can get back into doing a bit of British Eventing with him as he and I enjoy it, just finding enough brave pants to enter him into a BE 90 to give us something to aim for. I really am enjoying having him back in work even if he does look like a hairy monster at the moment. I also would love him to tag along for the showjumping journey with Ruby and Ollie. Hopefully a horse lorry would be on the cards soon.

Ollie & Chester

The next exercise we had from Tim was a set of jumps on a sort of zig zag line, circling back on yourself to the next jump. I felt like this made me sit up and look for my next jump, which helped me see a stride easier, as I always had my eye on the next fence and therefore rode to the jump for the stride I wanted.

Ollie smiling for the camera

The first attempt we done, I found that I struggled on the circle to the right which was the second circle on the exercise. The right rein is his weaker rein so he tended to land on the wrong lead, and fall in through his shoulder and bend his head and neck to the outside of the circle. So I did put a cone on the circle so I had something to ride around and this helped me bend him off my inside leg and get a better line to the next jump.

I found this exercise really helped me to use my arena more and upon landing sit up and look around for my next fence, especially as our arena is slightly small the circles were quite tight for ollie and he did find the exercise hard. However I felt that his rhythm between the fences got better and after each fence he would land and wait for me to tell him which way we were going, which made riding each circle to the next fence easier and made him more rideable.

Myself & Glyn

Horses are my everyday job and running a livery yard alongside getting the horses fit is hard work but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I absolutely love the horses and what I do, and getting to show you what I get up to through these blogs is the best! I hope that 2016 is going to be a good year for everyone and I hope you all get to do the things you’ve always wanted to do! Good luck everyone! Bring on 2016!