Pony Club Dressage.

Blogs have been a bit thin on the ground since the school holidays started. Three weeks in and the 3rd camp starts on Monday and with everything else thats been going on I haven’t had much time to write. Today we have been at the Pony Club Dressage held at Pencoed College. Amelia decided to take on the team this year as she teaches the Level 5’s. We discussed the horses and Amelia wanted to use Blue and Eric with Taranog and Buffy, I knew they would be ok but I wasn’t sure how Blue and Eric would behave away from home. Both have nice paces but both can be rather erratic. The difference from the first practice to the last was amazing. All of them were working their horses and achieving some really nice moments. On Thursday Blue was due for shoeing, she is not an easy mare to shoe and she played up and caught her hind leg in the farriers tool box. Fortunately she was sound and seemed alright. Saturday Carys tacked her up to practice, thought she looked a bit odd walking to the school, when she got on her she was hopping lame. By the time I got to the school she would not even walk, she had a nasty swelling and a small cut at the top of her forearm. We eventually managed to get her back to the stable . Carys then had an hour to find something else and was understandably upset after she had Blue going so well. This morning when she arrived on the yard Carys asked if we could have a look at her and I was amazed to see her walk out of the stable absolutely fine, (obviously a drama queen) the swelling had gone and she was perfectly sound. The standard of the Novice Challenge Dressage has certainly become much higher than it was a few years ago. I hadn’t taken a team for a couple of years and when we went last year I was surprised by how much the standard had changed and felt a bit out of our depth but this year that was not the case. The only disappointing part was Eric, because he started his test so well scoring 6’s and 7’s and then the car in the next arena beeped its horn for their rider to start as Eric was passing a flower tub. I think he thought it was the tub and he then refused to go near it. Sarah did her best to keep going but he didn’t really settle until the end of the test which was a shame because the way he started I think he could’ve had a really good score. Chloe and Buffy and Carys and Blue rode lovely tests and so did Laura who was placed 6th as an Individual. They team came 8th and I have to say the certainly held their own considering these horses do not leave home very often. I was very proud of them and I can honestly say they are the best team we have ever taken and all credit for that must go to Amelia.   The downside of Dressage is that it is an awfully long time doing nothing. We arrived at one and Laura was riding at 2 followed by Carys, Chloe then Sarah each test is approx 5 minutes so by 2.30 we were finished the results were at 7pm. At all pony Club events there always seems to be nice homemade cakes for sale and the Dinas Powys Pony Club were no exception, This is not good for the diet I might add, and by 3pm in typical british weather style it hammered down but at least it was dry for our tests. I did feel sorry for the kids riding theirs in the rain though.

Posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 1:27 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.