March is flying by and is definitely going down as one of my best months yet! It began with my 16th birthday. The celebration started on the weekend before, when my brother came back from university and I was taken up to the yard for a surprise. My Mum and my trainer, Dan Sherriff, had been plotting. They had secretly organised for me to have a lesson on Lawrence, Dan’s Grand Prix horse. This was such a good opportunity for me to get a feel for the flying changes and even have a play around with piaffe and passage. When Lawrence was piaffing it was the most amazing feeling, I had to sit really still and soft to maintain the cadence he needed to piaffe. To have such energy underneath you is a truly wonderful experience. Not only was it good to ride the piaffe and passage but doing the changes was great - I even did a diagonal of one tempis. The only thing I could do after was let out a little scream! It was such a fabulous lesson and a big thank you to Dan who allowed me to ride his amazing horse!
I spent the actual day of my birthday with my best friends who totally spoilt me. Then it was home for some more presents and I could tell that there was going to be another surprise. I opened all my presents including clothes, makeup, a lovely ring from my brother and a spa day from my boyfriend. My final present was an envelope and I was intrigued to find out what it contained. When I opened it I could hardly believe my eyes. My sneaky parents had managed to win an auction prize to raise money for the GBR teams to go to Kentucky and the prize was a lesson with Laura Bechtolsheimer! I was stunned and totally excited! I can’t wait to go there in April and experience Laura’s expertise first hand! All in all my birthday was full of amazing surprises and lovely presents!
In the meantime I was carrying on my preparation for Myerscough Premier League. Gigolo was going really well and Daylight was continuing to improve in her work and becoming stronger and stronger. I have been working on getting Gig’s neck out as I sometimes get him ‘too short in the neck’. This is an ongoing thing I am trying to work on and I really concentrated on it in my lesson yesterday - which, I may add, went brilliantly! On the other hand Daylight is mostly out in the neck and we are continuing to make her stronger and more supple so she can improve on her overall lateral work.
We had a fun journey up to Myerscough with Michelle, our excellent show groom, and my best friend Emma. When we arrived I schooled both ponies - they worked really well but reflecting on it, I realise I may have got a little too carried away with Daylight. Both ponies were rather excited and I just tried to keep them long and low and loosen them off after their long journey. The next day was the competition and it was an early start. Daylight was on first and although she was a well behaved lady I just felt she was lacking that all important sparkle. She wasn’t responsive to the leg which meant my performance was lacking power and the ‘wow’ factor hence my score was disappointing. So it’s back to training to try and improve - take the positives and work on the negatives.
After that somewhat disappointing ride it was on to 'the beast', Gigs. Sure enough HE wasn’t lacking energy and acted in the opposite way to Daylight. He found the arena rather exciting and decided to express himself by spooking and doing random leaps away from the judge’s box. It was one of those tests that had pleasing 8s followed by a 3! It was certainly a challenge for me on focusing! He was getting rather excited when a lorry started up outside and thought he was missing out on some of the action. This erratic behaviour was reflected in his overall score. However we did still manage to come second! You have to deal with these types of test, go back to the drawing board and just continue to work at things and improve for your next outing. That’s ponies for you!
I am currently working hard in the hope of being selected for the Addington CDI at Easter and I am off to the Unicorn for final GB squad training this weekend. It will be a really good opportunity to ride through the FEI tests again and I’ll let you know how everything goes!