Bonnie Fishburn’s Blog: New shoes and Frankie’s first outing!

On the cusp of the 2015 season we caught up with Bonnie Fishburn to see how she’s feeling, and what’s been keeping her busy so far. It sounds like her team are already challenging her – so she’ll be well-prepared for that first event! Good luck, Bonnie!

“It’s now the middle of March and the 2015 Eventing season is upon us. In two weeks time I will have done my first event. Exciting times!”

“The first 3 months of this year have been rather hectic for me, whilst I have been getting the horses fit and tuned up ready to start eventing. There has been a bit of a major change for two of my team. At the age of nearly eight and nearly nine, Percy and Florence have had their first set of shoes! Having to pay to shoe three of my horses is a scary thought but I just felt at the end of last season that they would benefit from being able to have studs.”

“So far this season we have been BE Jump Training where both Florence and Crosbie qualified for the championships, although due to the distance I didn’t go, and we have also been to a BE JAS, where we had a mixed day of Crosbie going green, Florence having a silly run out and Percy just having the last fence down. We’ve also had a few placings at BS shows, an arena eventing outing where Florence was 1st and Percy 2nd in the 1m class and have had a couple of dressage outings. Everybody has been having positive percentages and picking up rosettes which is a great start to the season”

“Today my three went head to head for the very first time in the Novice 22 at Reaseheath College. It was Frankie’s first outing for 10 months, so as you can probably imagine he was rather excited! To make things worse he had never travelled on Queen Wendy the Wagon before with his brother and sister. He had some nice moments and also some slightly neurotic moments, including nearly dropping me as soon as I got on. 60.17% certainly isn’t a good score for him but I’m just delighted he’s back, next time I think I might take him alone! Next up was Percy, he has bags of talent but it’s just learning how to put it altogether on one day, he had a good score of 66.37% which was good enough for 4th. And then along came Florence to show the boys how it should be done, she did a very accurate and pleasant test to take the class by a huge 4% on a 71.37%. She really does know how to please me. I also had Crosbie on board for the Prelim 15 and he acted all grown up to score 66.95% good enough for 5th in a big class of 22. Very pleasing day for them all, next time I just need to remind Frankie that dressage is different from eventing and its highest score that wins not lowest!!”

“Next plan is for Percy, Florence and Crosbie to all go and compete in a Riding Club Combined Training qualifier and also find a day to go and play round the cross country at Somerford Park. They have all been round the farm ride there this year but just need a bit more practice before their first events.”