November 13, 2006

battle hill

Headed out eventing at Battle Hill on Sunday. Up at 5.30am - Mum had come down the night before to drive, and Nick was coming out as photographer and support person, so everyone had to get up early. I swear we don't have to get up this early for showjumping.

Loaded and travelled extremely well. Warmed up quite nicely for the dressage and did what I thought was a very nice test. Marks were all quite close together for the class though:


While warming up we did notice her get her tongue over the bit, which might explain all the head flicking last weekend. Must do up noseband a bit tighter when she's doing dressage. I was really pleased with her though, think she was 3rd or 4th after the dressage.


Showjumping was a bit of a mixture. She took 3 rails, all just lazy back legs. She's gone past the green stage of overjumping everything, and is now being too economical in her jump, but I do think that between raising the fences and a bit of schooling at home the rails won't be an issue. What was awesome was how she went - a perfect showhunter round... right leg every time, lovely rhythmic canter the whole way, and she really does come back perfectly for cornering:


No troubles at the cross country start this time - walked in calmly and then trotted out happily. She was a bit spooked at the first few fences with the fence judges sitting on the jumps, but by jump 3 she was in full swing. Gave me a perfect XC run, with just 20 faults at the very last fence (though after watching the video I wouldn't have penalised it as she kept moving forward/sideways). So I am really stoked:


She certainly didn't have a problem with the hills or the variety of fences, and I think she's about ready to try a pre-training run somewhere:


Cantering through the flags - she looks like a fat little pony:


After all that we didn't wait around for scores, but I drove the truck home! All the way back to the grazing, with Miss Silviapples in the back. No scrambles or stumbles either. Impressive I thought.

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