June 2014
Since my last blog I have remained busy with the horses and
Herbie had a run at Bishop Burton at the end of May. Unfortunately the weather
was terrible and it rained pretty much constantly for the whole two days of
competition. Herbie was in the BE100 which was his 3rd event of the
year. He did a very respectable dressage of 32.5 and a beautiful clear in the
showjumping which was lovely as I’ve worked hard on this phase and he is
continually improving. The cross country was relatively straight forward but
the going was deteriorating quickly so I was thrilled that he got stuck in and
went round clear. We added 6 time penalties to our dressage score as the ground
was holding and he’s relatively inexperienced so I didn’t hammer him round.
This left him in 6th place meaning he has been placed in all 3 of
his starts this year….not a bad record! I had decided to give Alfie that
weekend off which paid dividend as he doesn’t like very wet going so no doubt I
would have been in a difficult position deciding whether to withdraw him.
I will have one last run on Alfie before the wedding which
will be Skipton this weekend. It’s one of my favourite events and I would like
to move him back up to novice for the August Skipton fixture so it will be a
nice prep run. Plus, I can’t think of a nicer way to take my mind off the stress
of planning a wedding than eventing Alfie!
I had a jumping lesson with Zoe on both horses earlier this
week where she really pushed us and I was thrilled to see both horse cope well
with bigger tracks so hopefully this bodes well for the rest of the season.
Once I’m back from honeymoon I have my sights set on getting
Herbie qualified for Badminton Grassroots and Alfie moving back up to novice
level so it’s all systems go! In the meantime I’m hoping the sun will continue
to shine (both for equestrian and wedding activities!)
Best Wishes,
Team Cawood
