February has been a strange month, with a little less help at home than usual with just one groom working for me, and what seems like an impossible number of horses to get worked each day! My young horses have had to be put into intermittent work to make time for all the clients horses and my higher level horses!
After a cross country schooling boot camp at Benalla and Mansfield for the eventing first timers, we headed off to Ballarat Hickstead, the first event of the season. I was very pleased with how the four horses I took performed. They all did nice dressage tests, Geisha did her best yet in the 1*. Hughie was a touch tense but still scored well in his first EvA 105 test. And Chuckle and Woody were both super cute in their first ever dressage tests! All four of them then went on to jump double clear rounds, a great way to start the season!
The following weekend we headed to Shepparton for the NVSJC Summer Show. The highlight of the show was placing in two classes on the main arena with Hughie and Geisha who both jumped super. Geisha stepped up to her first 1.20m class in a while, and proved to be well and truly ready taking out 5th place! Hughie placed 4th in the 1.10m, a super result for such a green horse. The younger horses had a great time in arena 2, with Woody jumping around his first 104cm with ease. Chuckle showed some serious style in the 75cm and 90cm classes each day, as did Ruby and my new TB Milo. I feel pretty lucky with the quality of some of the young horses I am getting to ride – just can’t wait until they have a couple more years of education under their belt!
For a change of scene the next weekend, we headed up to Bundalong on the Murray River for a weekend of water skiing and wakeboarding. This was the late Christmas break up party for all the farriers at Lindsay Park racing where Andy works, and so we had a great time having a non-horsey weekend while everyone else was at Geelong HT.
I was pretty sore on Monday after so much waterskiing on the weekend and I was welcomed back by a few pretty fresh horses after their two whole days off in a row! Geisha was the most energetic and the bot fly chasing us for the first part of the ride definitely didn’t help!
My 2** eventer and Grand Prix show jumper Zone is back in rehab after having been sidelined by a suspensory ligament injury for most of 2017. He is currently up to walking 45 minutes, soon to begin trotting. Still early days in terms of rehab – fingers crossed! I would love to be able to get this superstar out competing again.
March will see us heading to both Canberra Horse Trials and Wandin Horse Trials.