It’s a bit of a slow month for us at the moment as I appear to be working at least 10 hours per day. Luckily the awful weather hasn’t affected us too much thanks to our location and facilities, but the fields are definitely off limits for a while.
Harley also turned into a yeti over night so the clippers had to come out…..
So before:

And After:

This time we headed for Northallerton for the BRC Winter Dressage Qualifier. This competition is slightly different from the summer series as there’s only one class which is a team competition.

Each team can have four members in which a maximum of two perform a Prelim test and a maximum of two perform a Novice test.

The team I was in was totally different from the team I was with in the summer. Myself and Harley were put forward to produce a Prelim test. Unluckily though our team was drawn first to go which not only meant an early start but also had the risk of the judge not wanting to award higher marks.

Before talking about the test I must say how amazing Harley was in the warm up. He was very well behaved compared to his normal nervous self and even allowed horses to canter past him (something this time last year would never have had happened!). So once again I’m singing the praises of the EquiFeast team especially Emily who suggested that we swapped onto the Magnesium Free Winning Edge. If you feel that your horse has excess energy or is slightly quirky you really wouldn’t be wasting your time or money putting them on Winning Edge, the results speak for themselves!

Anyway onto the test and all I can say is that it was very polite. Ideally I would have liked a bit more ’Wow-factor’ but the surface was very deep and squelchey which wasn’t ideal - after all he‘s become so used to a premium surface in his bed thanks to Equibright I think he may now becoming slightly spoilt! On the positive he kept in canter on a bad surface would have resulted in a break in canter last year.

I came out feeling quite positive (which is rare for me) and said that the test was at least a 67% test.

I ended up being right as we scored 67.1%. Over all I was slightly disappointed it wasn’t higher but we later found out I came 2nd by 0.2% and the judge is a very well known BD listed judge. Although, there wasn’t any prizes for individually but we were feeling quite positive about a team place. Sadly two members didn’t have the best day so our team missed out on qualification as we ended up in 3rd place out of a very large field, but on the positive its always nice to leave an event with a frillie!!

We also received our dressage sheet from the BE80 Championships. Both sheets show how consistent Harley is becoming we just now need the consistency to be 7's and 8’s and not 6's and 7’s- so still lots of winter work to do!