Bonnie Fishburn – Time for a break!

I have had a super busy October but not doing things that I particularly enjoy doing!!!  Instead of playing ponies all day and going off to competitions I’ve had to put the ponies to one side and get on with decorating my house and painting furniture. I had hoped to just crack on with riding this autumn, having missed part of the event season due to having baby Harriet, but I’ve discovered that trying to look after 8 horses, ride 4, look after a baby and decorate a whole house is near on impossible. So I made the sensible decision to turn the horses out for a holiday mid-October and will start working them again in December, by which time I hope that the majority of the house will be finished and I will have more time to play ponies.

I did however manage to get out to one more competition before I turned them away. I took 3 on the lorry to Maelor Equestrian for a bit of dressage. I rode Elfie in Prelim 13 and apart from being a tad spooky at the signs in the arena he went really well, especially considering he hadn’t been in a dressage arena for 4 months. I also suffered a bit of “Baby Brain” and completely missed out a circle to score a BIG fat “0”, I thought it was a little unfair of the judge not to ring the bell to inform me I’d gone wrong. I’d have happily gone back and ridden the circle and taken the -2 penalty marks rather than being scored the -2 AND a 0!!!! Next up I rode Percy in the Novice 28. He felt wonderful at times and a little explosive at others!!! I think the wind howling through the slats in the indoor arena had a lot to do with the explosive moments. Oh and I had one more “Baby Brain” moment where I added a circle…haha. We scored a 67.9%. The third horse that went was Frankie, who my friend Hayley rode beautifully in the Novice 24. He was also a little on edge with the wind but Hayley kept her cool for 68.2%. Lovely to be out again and with a great team of supporters.

I was excited last week to receive in the post a surprise from the Horslyx team of 4 x 5kg Mint Balancers. The horses have had them in the mini blocks and love them, but never had them in this size, lucky ponies.