Its been a while since my last Blog for which I apologise but I have not been idle!!! Following an amazing summer with Gleavo culminating in the European Championships we came to the heart breaking decision that we had gone as far as we could together. He was rising 16 and after all he had given me it seemed unfair to push him to Grand Prix – a level he was already finding very difficult. Luckily we found a great home for him with Irish Eventing Young Rider Team member – Ella Boyle. Ella is a lovely rider and Gleavo is already doing us proud teaching Ella the advanced dressage movements.
So the search was on – it was not going to be easy to follow Gleavo but after a couple trips to Holland and the invaluable help of Anna Ross and Diederik Wigmans we found Floyd – an 8 year old gelding out of Furstenbull with some very wild changes!!! Floyd arrived at the end of April he settled in really well and we very quickly found what and endearing chap he was and a great character!!
Over the winter Bob had been chipping away with his training – taking a break from competing in order to do this and is now pretty much ready to go out at Advanced Medium.
Nero was brought back into work in the autumn and trained really well over the winter – he has been out to a couple of competitions at Prelim and Novice scoring a +70% and +71% at his first outing – what a star! I feel he is now more than ready to contest his first Elementary.
Olly , who had had the winter off to grow and mature, was brought back into work in the spring . He is working well and I am very excited for his future.
Now , back to Floyd ! After having him just a few weeks we took him out to contest a Medium and an Advanced Medium in what turned out to be gale force winds – but he was a total star – scoring +73% in the medium with a host of 8’s .The AM he was still very green at and his changes still wild but with some great tips from the judge I came home with lots to work on and SO excited about things to come! We did a couple more local shows which qualified us for Summer Regionals in both the Medium and the Advanced Medium. In June we headed to Wellington Premier League – a big ask but again Floyd excelled himself and in one test gained 70% from an International judge. The beginning of July saw us at Hartpury Premier League where we came 3rd in the Advanced Medium and did our Advanced debut to finish 10th.This boy really does learn and improve so so quickly.
August took us to the South West Regionals at Bicton where we finished 5th in both the Medium and Advanced Medium in testing conditions – pouring rain and gale force winds!!! Later in the month we ventured to Bury Farm High Profile for three days. We competed in the AM on the first day coming 2nd behind an Olympic rider then we contested two Advanced tests – all the time he is getting so much better at this level and our tempi’s are now controlled – I came away feeling that our first PSG is just around the corner ………………………watch this space !!!!!
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