Sam a month full of ups and downs

Ollie jumping at home

Hi guys! Thanks for coming back to see how we’ve gotten on this month! 🙂 I’ve had a month full of ups and downs with the horses! The first being taking Ollie to compete at the Welsh masters for the first time! I absolutely loved watching the bigger classes, as they aren’t many big shows around they do give you a boost of determination and they are just amazing classes to watch!

Ollie in his stable at Welsh Masters

I took Ollie to the Welsh Masters where we competed at British Novice Open on the Friday, and the Discovery Open, On the Friday Ollie jumped double clear giving us loads of confidence for the Discovery Open the next two days! Then going onto the Saturday he jumped really well, but had a very unlucky pole due to a watertray at the edge of the area which took his concentration for the next jump! Then on the Sunday after a long day of waiting around for our class, he produced an awesome round with the most unluckiest fence down at number two, which meant we missed out on first place because we would have been the only DC in the class! But lots to learn from the whole weekend, and it was so nice to ride amongst some big showjumping names and gain experience watching them warm up and do their rounds!

The next show I done was the TVRC showjumping in Pibwrlyd College, I only took Ruby to this as Ollie had been to Broomes the weekend before. I booked Ruby in for the 95cm and the 1m. It was a very mixed day with Ruby coming off the box a bit stressy, and warming up she wasn’t quite herself, but she seemed happy enough and continued to jump in the warm up with no problems. The 95cm proved to be quite an exciting round with a parting of ways at jump number 7, I hung on for my life until I decided that Ruby wasn’t going to stop so made an executive decision to let go, haha! So took her in the 1m after and she jumped a fab round with a pole down at the beginning half of the course.

Honeychop bags on their way to the TVRC show

The winner of one of the sponsored classes, Theresa Nazer

Also the same weekend was dressage on the day after the showjumping, both of these TVRC events we’re kindly sponsored by Honeychop, and people we’re absolutely landed to find out they’d won a prize and I was told that some people came to the show so they could try and win a Honeychop bag! I loved the comments and gratitude I had of the competitors and they all loved their Honeychop Prizes!

Me givign out rosettes to winners of Honeychop classes

I still go to regular training sessions with Jonathan Pett, and I am very pleased with the way mine and Ollie’s confidence has been coming on leaps and bounds! Everytime I take him to training, Jonathan has another exercise for us to attempt, and most weeks Ollie is fab down distances, jumping on angles, you name it! I’m really chuffed that our confidence is 100x better than it was last year, and that I’m starting to want to progress up higher in competitions and learn more and more about the sport I love!

Me and Ollie in training

I am full at home now with the livery yard being a full time job, I have a few of my own horses in and now I have opened our summer fields as they are nice and dry. Its nice to chuck the horses out in the afternoon after they’ve been worked to have a mooch around and munch some grass. I honestly couldn’t see myself doing anything else other than working with horses, its my dream job and although it can be very hard, especially through the winter, I wouldn’t change it for the world and I hope to continue to do it for as long as I can.

Chester enjoying turnout

So this month has been super and I’m looking forward to taking Ollie up to Broomes again in May to compete and hopefully being brave enough to go for a 1.05m class. Thank-you so much for keeping up to date with our monthly blogs, it really means a lot to me!