December 29, 2008

Kyrewood - Neo

Neo didn't do anything on Saturday - but stayed in the nice shaded yards beside Dee. I took him for a ride around the grounds on Saturday afternoon once all of the classes had finished and he was feeling really good (perhaps a little full of himself? haha) - but he was striding out and just so much happier than at QEP. So I think he's back to his normal self, yay.

Just as I was putting Neo away for the night, Nick turned up after being over in Masterton at the drag racing event over there, and checking on the horses at Mum's place (Gem and Zak can get into quite a bit of trouble when unsupervised!). The unexpected visit was a really nice surprise, and so after packing the horses away with their dinner and drinks, the 4 humans headed over to the BBQ that Kyrewood hosted for competitors, which was great fun.

Unfortunately, after dinner Swifty wasn't feeling too well- so he had to head home. But Nick stayed on overnight and also for the first half of Sunday to take a few photos which was very much appreciated.

Our first showjumping on Sunday was in Ring1. Neo warmed up quite well - but still very full of beans and leaping off the long stride whenever he could get away with it. I tried to not discourage him though, as it's something we've been working on for ages (he used to get in under the jumps quite a bit).

He didn't bat an eyelid about any of the fillers or the wall or anything like that. We took a couple of rails just through not getting our striding correct - but got better & better through the round. And of course he came out of the ring with twice as much energy as he entered with!


We decided to take advantage of this newfound longer stride, and did the Open round the ring. It was a really unusual course, with a mix of knock-down fences, XC fences, and brush fences. Neo had a ball of a time hooning around:

Later in the afternoon I had another showjumping round on Neo, and we were really starting to get it together. I sort of sat there like a dummy for the first few fences, and then as we headed toward the third fence I could see our stride was off, and I sat up to shorten him and he just adjusted straight away and met the fence perfectly. The rest of the round was just absolutely magical - a huge step for Neo & I and it makes me realise that the more work I put into getting all that basic schooling right, the more he rewards me with an easier horse to ride.

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