Pretty Pictures

Riding out at Otiro hunt riding Kiwi Icon whom has to be one of the best hunters ever. He never touches a fence regardless of how bad the distance is. Fastest front end ever.

So happy to be back on this guy even if we did go sideways for the early part of the hunt. Jumped 2 full wires. After the first two runs I pulled up and mostly watched because he has lost a lot of fitness and felt a little stiff hear the end. 

Small field for the Wednesday hunt made for competitive hunting and peer pressure to jump things. So despite the less than pretty prep on the fences my horse was a super star. He tries hard. Jumped tapes even

Looking across the South Wairarapa; the Rimutaka Hills in the background with the light shining off of Lake Wairarapa 

Ike got to try the new compression suit after he whipped all day at the hunt. Very interested to see how he goes tomorrow. The lovely Butch with his white stockings pulled up to his knees.

Bojangles

My horse is funny looking. He is a very very pretty colour and has lovely white socks in the front which I like. He has a swayed back and his shoulder is bigger than his hindquarter. His neck is tending to be muscled all the wrong way. Despite this he is a pretty mover and he tries so hard and he is a super jumper with an awesome back end. 

He has been so wearying. There was a moment about 2 months ago when I had just had a gutsful of him. He requires a very precise ride and previous riders have created some anxiety I'm constantly working against to keep him relaxed and settled. He can be lazy but also can over react to the spur and get rattled by it. He loses condition easily and puts it on slowly. He windsucks and he has this coffin joint issue and he is the highest maintenance horse I have ever owned by a lot. 

And then I evented him and I found his calling. He loves it so much and he is so good at it. Well his dressage sucks but that will come we can fix that. And he hunts like a gangster. He isn't the big warmbloody powerhouse Sjer of my dreams, not even close. He is a slightly simple, quirky sensitive difficult horse. He was so grumpy when I first brought him and at least now he is more cheerful and likes cuddles and being engaged.

Not being able to ride him has been so frustrating and I realised something yesterday. I love him. I never used to love him, and maybe he didn't turn out to be the horse I wanted and I better get braver eventing because thats where he belongs, but I love him anyway.

One Sick Pony

So out hunting two weeks ago, Butchly got to small cuts on his back legs. He then missed the showjumping day and I catchrode a baby for my old boss, because his front legs had swollen up. I think this was from the red clover diet and because he stocks up when he isn't moving much. He looked to be improving until Friday of Easter and then cue two hot fat swollen back legs and a very poorly pony.

The swelling even spread to the front of his face (weird) and two patches under his belly. So cue all the antibiotics and one sad pony. He is quite sore in the neck from the injections and he wouldn't eat of the ground for a long time, though I make him eat his hard fed off the ground because he needs to use his neck to stop it hurting.

The downside is I wont make the 3DE at Taupo for the national championships because I needed one more qualifying score and I will miss the last two chances to compete because they are inside his drug withholding. That is far less important than getting my horse right of course but a shame all the same.
Horses.

No Interwebs

It's a painful painful thing to have no internet! Things have been happening that I don't even know about! Still in this brief window of internet I will catch you all up. So last weekend was the Northern Hawkes Bay Autumn event, run over two days. Now I did enter the Pre-Novice which was a big step up from the Training. It's set up at 1.05m and they can go up to 1.25m with the brush. Which is scary being that my horse doesn't brush.

The dressage was an improvement for him. He warmed up so perfectly (Had a dressage weekend last week) but of course I lost the rhythm and swing some once I got into the arena. He didn't break as often and I lost silly marks not riding accurately so I got a 47 which is pretty bad, luckily the judge marked everyone hard. Well apart from the good tests but that is fair enough.

Then we showjumped and he was of course perfect to showjump. Even the judge said it was a lovely round, just like a big rocking horse. So I was 23rd after the dressage out of 27 which isn't ideal and moved up to 20th after a clear showjumping. The XC was very very large. Actually the first two fences were ok but the third fence was a huge oxer/couch hedge. Freaked me out! He came round and I sort of felt him go really? and I was like yes and he was like ok lets do this. It felt like we spent about three days in the air, the brush would have been 1.20m high and about 1.50m wide and he made sure he didn't touch a leaf.

Then it was two sort of narrow houses set on a showjumping five strides and I jumped in and collected him and I was like come on and my distance was there and boom, easy peasy.  Two straight forward fences and then it was a jump to a uphill climb to a hanging log with a very steep landing. I kept the power on and he popped over. The landing was so steep I got that stomach dropping feeling. He had a bit of a bounce, I think it came as a bit of a surprise to him. Then it was smooth sailing until the sunken road. This was a drop and then jumped out and up again two strides to an arrow head with brush that would have been 1.20m again. Luckily I was given some advice that you have to get your two strides in the bottom of the sunken road or you wont get the ride out. So I landed and rode on for the two strides, got my jump up and was like come one pony! Help your Mumma and he just flew over it. He had a wee bobble jumping into the water jump, where he just hesitated a little but seeing as its third water jump in competition thats fine.

The only other really big question was a very skinny upright in the middle of an empty space and he sort of wanted to go around but I kept my leg on and used my laser eyes and he jumped over perfectly. The final fence was a double jumping across a lane way with some overhanging trees. He jumped it perfectly but ducked under the trees which cracked me up. It had rained really hard just before the start so the ground was really greasy just before my class. I had gone in with the mentality that I wouldn't push for time, but with the rain some more economical lines I had walked got dropped. I just let him roll around in his rhythm which meant I had 16 time faults to add. Which is a lot. Like 40 seconds to make up, but I could have to be fair because I never opened him up on the straights and he finished with heaps tank in the gas.

He was an absolute rockstar and the most confident and perfect XC horse ever. Now I just need to get into this dressage thing sorted out.