Long Overdue Update

Well, its about time. Tomorrow its been six months since I sent my beautiful Tom Kat over that Rainbow Bridge. Can't believe how the time has gone so quick.

Kandy had continued to impress me.

Days two and three of the Winter dressage series saw us get two seconds and a first and second on the last day resulting in us winning the Overall Points Champion and a wonderful wide sash. What a star and I must say my ribbons look lovely hanging in the lounge.

We have also has two jumping lessions with Gary Sinclair who is a wonderful instructor. We had a blast at each day and Kandy is happy to jump 50cm.

We alo completed at the Western Hills Spring Show, where she went really well. The Judge unfortunately only had eyes for just about the same 6 horses in each class. Never mind. The only bad thing about the day was Kandy's behaviour at the Float. She was a right bitch, she started stressing as her best paddock friend was a few floats over. She bit me, kick me and barged me into the float.

On Sunday we tackled our first ODE at Te Marua. I was very unprepared due to a rather nasty fall two weeks earlier in which I think I cracked a rib or two as I'm only just coming right now, although it still hurts to sneeze!

Our dressage was the worst test she has done as I had little time to warm up, due to the long ride to the arena and once I was there, the judge gave me my bell and I didn't realise which gave us 30 seconds to get into the arena. She did do a nice second half of the test and her cantering is getting better so that instead of running into the canter, she reacts to my request and goes straight away and on the correct lead.

Show Jumping again wasn't great. She was happy doing the low practice jump and felt really good going over it but once I faced her at the 65cm height she said "don't be stupid mum, thats too high and went to the left and I went to the right. Not sure how I managed it, but I did a very atheletic dismount and landed on my feet thank goodness, as I was determined to to land on those ribs again.

So after being eliminated from the SJ, I decided to just give Kandy a look at the x-country jumps being the first time she'd seen any. We managed 4 out of 14 as I was just too worried about falling again to push really hard. We did two small logs, a nice max size jump near the end of the course and the final ditch. I let her look at all the jumps and only did the once I felt comfortable with. She hated the water jump and refused to get her feet wet so tomorrow we are going to do a river crossing with her best paddock friend in the lead just to get her used to the water.

Our next outing is in two weeks at our Riding Club Spring Show where we will do flat classes and jumping at 60cm, then I'd like to tackle the Battle Hill ODE on the 21st as that is a course I know well and really like.

All this means I really need to get her jumping this week at least 60cm which now I've done the first ODE should be a breeze.