Bonnie Fishburn – Welcoming a new arrival

May seems to have flown by, maybe it’s because it’s been an exciting month due to me having a very exciting new arrival here at Dodcott Grange in the form of Nancy. For those of you that don’t know or haven’t seen any of the hundreds of pictures I’ve posted on social media, Nancy is my beautiful chestnut filly out of my lovely mare Florence and by Amiro Z. She was born just as the clock stuck midnight on 11th May. She is just about perfect and a bundle of joy to have about, of course she has cheeky days but they are all forgiven because of her super cuteness. I basically moved into my horsebox for about 10 days to watch over Florence and got up through the night to check on her and the birth all went very smoothly which was a huge relief.

Arrow who I had been breaking over the last couple of months is now having a little bit of chill time. We got to the stage where I could get straight on her and plod off on a hack or take her in the arena for a little school, which she was accepting perfectly. So she is now having a holiday to think about everything she has learnt and to carry on growing with the aim of doing the odd in hand show through the summer and then picking her back up in autumn / winter ready for her 4 year old season when she will go out and learn all about pony parties in 2018.

On 13th May Elfie and I headed off to Llanymynech for his third BE90. And what can I say other then the boy did me proud. He started the day with a beautiful dressage test, just so fluent and floaty for 24.3 to lie 4th out of 42. He then went on to jump a clear in the sj and gave me a quick spin round the cross country which had caused a fair amount of trouble during the day. He added 1.6 speeding penalties to his score to finish in 2nd place. I’m so pleased with how far he has come iin such a short space of time and how well he has taken to his career in eventing.

On 21st Percy and I had a lovely day at Somerford Park Horse Trials in the BE100 Plus. Perhaps not the result we would have liked but it never starts well when you trot down the centre line to a judge that never seems to like me when I’m riding my cow pony. I was very pleased with his test and he did everything I asked of him but unfortunately only scored a 34.8 which left us in 17th spot out of 42. He then pinged round the showjumps beautifully but lowered his first rail of the season at fence 5 to pick up 4 penalties. Then on to the cross country and he gave me the most fabulous round, felt a million dollars and made nothing of it for a clear inside the time. The unfortunate 4 faults sj cost us 10 places so ended up in 17th out of the 42 competitors. But we had a lovely time and that is the main thing.

On 28th May I headed to Birmingham Childrens Hospital Charity Show. I had husband Tom to help along with friends Kirsty Walton and Camilla Hardie. Supporters Betty and Dolly the dogs and loaded on Queen Wendy we had Elfie, Frankie and Percy. Elfie competed in two Dressage tests and was later supposed to jump in two showjumping classes but we missed those because Frankie was in his classes. But he performed two lovely tests for 70.45% in Prelim 7 for 3rd and 70% in Prelim 18 for 2nd. Frankie was entered in the Ridden Veteran class which he was 1st in and later went Reserve Ridden Champion. He then did the Open Working Hunter class which he was also 1st in and later took the Working Hunter Championship. He was impeccably well behaved all day, I was so proud of him. I took Percy in the Non Native Ridden Coloured class and he was super and gave me a fabulous ride, he finished 3rd in that one and then later he was 1st in the Ridden Sport Horse. He should have gone back in for the championship but I was already riding Frankie. All in all it was a really busy day and at times I questioned my sanity entering so many classes but we all had such a lovely fun day at a super run show which had fantastic prizes.

The following day having had a little lie in and recovered from riding in 9 classes I woke up and decided I would drag Arrow in out of the field and head to the North Shropshire Showing Association show. She hadn’t been in the lorry or had a bath and been plaited since last August but she was super well behaved and off we headed. I took her in the In-hand Youngstock class which she won. She trotted round the arena beautifully for me and the judge seemed to really like her. She later went on to be In-hand Champion along with taking the Reserve Supreme of Show award. I was so pleased that I’d decided to take her.

And then two days later Frankie and I, along with Mum, Betty and Dolly headed off to the Staffordshire County Show for the Senior Showing & Dressage Ltd Ridden Pre-Veteran class. Frankie performed beautifully and took 2nd place. So that was a super busy finish to May having had a relatively quiet start to it.

Now on to June where I have no eventing entries, just a handful of showing entries. The ground has just gone so firm that the horses are going to have a bit of quiet time until we have some rain.