Sydney Mid Week Event

The second half of the season has begun! With a tune up Jumping lesson from Stuart prior to the event Crafty was ready for his next appearance at the Sydney Mid week in which he was entered in the Pre-Novice. The event had a pretty relaxed atmosphere but Crafty thought it was very exciting as his last outing was nearly seven weeks ago. He warmed up really well for his test and I feel his flat work is really coming along. Unfortunately upon approaching the arena he decided he was feeling a little fresh and subsequently didn't score as well as I had hoped as his neck got a bit short. There may be something to do with the fact I have being feeding him a lot to put some more weight on him during winter, might need to reduce feed before the next event, woops! He did look very nice though. I have a video which I will try to upload soon.

The second day we had SJ first. Crafty did a very good clear round and was being especially careful! The fences actually looked small which is good. He had a couple of admirers that wanted to know where he came from :) XC he was excellent as well. The course was really good with a variety of fences, I probably could have let him travel more in the first half of the course, but I wanted to make sure he was listening and adjustable as it had been so long between shows. But he is really getting confident and is starting to understand the related lines more and jumped into the water with no problems. Over all I was very pleased, he is such a star! Our next show is Tamworth in two weeks time, so we are looking forward to that :)

 

Winter woollies

After a busy start to the season and reasonably good weather we all turned our calendar over to the month of June, and it was as if the beauro of meteorology and the Channel 7 weather reporter took great joy in announcing that the first day of winter was upon us. So literally from that point on it was rain, rain, rain, rain with absolutely no sign of sun for the next few weeks. There is only one word to describe it 'miserable' oh and 'muddy', yes there was mud everywhere, even a trail through our house, and none of us know how to use the mop apparently. But the show must go on! Except for the two WA chickens who felt that riding in the sleet or snow at Berrima was far from appealing, so we opted to go to Clarendon Jump Club and do some training rounds in the rain, but it was almost humid, so was not too bad! So Crafty did the 1.10m a couple of times and then we did the 1.20m, he was really good, he actually felt better in the bigger height and he is feeling really confident and is trying very hard not to touch a thing. I was so happy with his progress that I decided after such a busy season so far he deserved a break. So in the very wet weeks ahead, Crafty got to stay warm in his winter woollies and hang out with his friend Rexy. I on the other hand packed the truck and took a trip south with the Tinneys to compete at Melbourne 3DE with Holy Bruce. It was a freezing week, but all the hard work paid off and we ended up 7th in the CCI2** against a very competitive field.

Nevertheless I think the few weeks of during June has done Crafty a world of good. I brought him up to the stables at the end of last week and under all those rugs is a horse that has matured and possibly grown a bit. I have lunged him for a few days and did some flat work on him today and he feels ready to tackle the remainder of the year. Our next event is the Sydney Mid-week at Pre Novice level in three weeks time so I will keep you posted. What is exciting news is that now we are in July the sun has come out and the boys got to go out in the nude and have a good old roll and play!

Rexy & Crafty