I recently read a comment on a forum saying how sick and tired some people are of reading blogs and reports of only positive outings and days. Well, horses aren’t always easy and there defiantly not predictable so here’s a competition day report that shows exactly that!

So on Saturday we made the journey down to Bishop Burton to do the Jump and Style competition. Basically for those who don’t know what this is it’s in some ways a one day event condensed into a 4 minute jumping round. The first part of the course is mainly show jump style jumps with the second part being more rustic/ knock able cross country style questions. You then marked by a judge on style on items such as riders position and horses submission (just like in a dressage test!).

It was being held in the International Arena which is truly stunning. Large, Light and Quite busy is the best way to describe it. Our first issue was going to be the warm up- being next to the cow shed especially seems his previous record with warm up areas hasn’t always been great/ easy! However, as normal Mr Harley surprised me and behaved very well allowing horses to canter and jump toward him without spinning around/ decking me on the floor! A sign that he’s finally starting to grow up perhaps?

We went in all I can say is that he went totally green on me! Very disappointing considering how he’s been working at home  but these things happen.  

He seemed to be asking questions such as ‘Why is there a tree indoors?’ ‘There’s a fence there, but there’s also a fence next to it and another behind so which one am I jumping?’

He seemed to have a pattern of jumping one or two nicely then coming to the next fence having a green stop but then jumping it at the second attempt. He was also getting very deep which is quite unlike him.

So unfortunately it was Elimination due to it being a competition- If only we could school round 1st and then jum
On the positive he did show some promise at some of the jumps so I’m hoping its just a case of more practise and it will be interesting to see how he goes next year as the JAS classes do seem to have a trend of the 1st time horses experience them they go very green but improve on their second attempt.

The photographer managed to take two shots that sums up the post (Not sure either of these will make the wall of fame any time soon though!)

http://www.chrislax.co.uk/2012/JAS%20Bishop%20Burton%20Jan%202012/BE90/slides/CLA_8561.html

But we did manage to get one decent shot before the DVD disk got full to prove that he can jump!

I have to thank www.thehorsewardrobe.co.uk though for my lovely saddle pad which we got to don for the 1st time hopefully we will manage to get lots of nice pictures from more successful events this year!

Below is our 2011 Competition winner's horse Romeo showing off just one of the prizes won by his mum Rosey Groombridge.

Above is Michelle Donnelly's  Hugo who isnow enjoying his Mum's 2nd Prize win of one five week Loader pack of Equifeast's Winning Edge Silver.

And Below is Amanda Friend's horse Titus checking out his Mum's new gloves in the mirror that she bought thanks to her voucher!

Thanks to my Secret Santa i gained a new spooky filler in the form of a 3D blow up Croc! So today we decided to try and build a spooky course in prep for our Jump And Style Competition next weekend. Sadly only having a 20x40 arena limited us in how many jumps but as you can see by the pictures Harley was most happy to be jumping again and didn't even glance at any of the fillers (much to my disappointment!). My only gripe is that after looking at the pictures, we weren't as straight as I thought we were when jumping the corner!
But then again I've never seen a corner that skinny without flags or ground poles at BE90 level (plus due to my space limits it was quite close to the corner and being a clever TB he knew where we were going next) so the fact he jumped it first time without stopping/ running out is quite a credit to his willingness to jump!
My Horsey Hoodie also kept me nice and toasty all morning! 

If you haven't seen already I'm now blogging for Horse Junkies United (www.horsejunkiesunited.com)
I'm going to try and write different blogs for Horse Junkies United and for this site so you don't end up reading things twice. My aim for Horse Junkies United is to share the features relating to British Eventing as the main target audience is North America. I'll also be doing lots of event reports leading up to London 2012 and features on Grassroot and Amateur Event riders within Britain. My own blog will remain an insight to my own personal in's and out
Horse Junkies United is also on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/HorseJunkiesUnited
And Twitter @HorseJunkiesUtd so make sure your following them!

Well here we were sat all smug thinking we'd avoided winter only to be hit with a heavy frost for the last few days!
Harley was fully clipped the day before this cold spell so his Animal Print Snuggy Hood Jam's have been worth their weight in gold. Speaking about Mr H he managed to throw a shoe the other day, farrier came out but suggested we kept it off for 3 days as he thought it was 50/50 if he was to develop gravel in the toe. But luckily the farrier has returned today and was happy to re shoe him - he's also put stud holes in which means if we can find a cross country course open we can go and have a play!
Due to his amazing timing once again he's managed to scupper my plans for today, but hopefully we can just delay them until Friday when we will be testing my 'stickability' and designing a scary home made Jump And Style course in prep for our JAS outing. Fingers crossed I survive so I can upload the video!