Bella Woodhouse – Beach rides and tumbles

Since my last blog it has been pretty nonstop, we managed to get out to a handful more shows in August. At the last show we went to I took Robbie in the novice workers where he jumped a beautiful clear and was on equal marks with 1st and 2nd but sadly the judge had a very scary hat on so dropped marks on his manners, but still came away with 3rd from a big class!

The judge suggested trying a veteran class with him as he looks so well for his age so we entered him in the veterans. I wasn’t really expecting much of it as it was a big class of 18 but Robbie did a foot perfect show to be placed 1st! Not only that but then we were pulled champion in a big section so Robbie was well deserving of the Horslyx he got as a reward.

We’ve also been out XC schooling a few times, however our last visit to Moor Farms XC course didn’t go quite to plan, after Robbie had been jumping really well around some of the open combinations we had a bit of a stumble at the water where Robbie lost his footing on the landing and we both ended up looking like swamp monsters. Thankfully Robbie came off fine although I managed to damage the ligaments in my foot, leaving me out of action for a couple of weeks but I have managed to clamber back on board a couple of times now.

This September I started doing Equine Studies in college so have ended up having very little time to see my own horses as I’m now out the house from half 6 in the morning till gone half 6 in the evening, and with winter almost here it means that its already dark by the time I get home! Unfortunately this means Robbie is unlikely to do much more competing this year as he’s going to be so unfit, we’re hoping he might be able to make the odd trip out show jumping here and there and we may have ago at some dressage but other than that he’ll be enjoying the life of a happy hacker for the next few months. Thankfully the college I go to hold a lot of competitions that I will be able to do on the horses they have there and I should be able to carry on competing Copper and he’ll still be making his appearance at RDA. My tutor has also had music made for Copper so that we’ll now be able to do his freestyle to music. We had our first run through it the other day and considering I hadn’t heard the music beforehand or even been through the test it went surprisingly well with someone shouting it to me over the music, although it could definitely do with some work!

Of course I can’t forget to put about all the beach trips we’ve been on as it is Robbie’s favourite place and I’m lucky enough that the people I work for were down on the beach on one of the days we went down and got a couple of lovely pictures of us. We also had a wander down last weekend where my mum proved she wasn’t too bad behind a camera either and managed to get some good shots where Robbie doesn’t look like a wild mountain pony which he does whilst we’re waiting for him to be clipped.