Well all my plans for riding Mez went out of the window last week and the only time I managed to ride her was on Wednesday when we went for a family hack round the block. I had intended to school her on Thursday and Friday but the weather was against us and time ran out.......This meant that the last time I rode her was the dressage two weeks ago!!!
Saturday morning arrived and I had hosed her off and cleaned her up on Friday evening so we were nice and clean...or so I thought!! However as Peter was setting off for work he popped back in to say that 'dressage pony' was in the field!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She was covered in mud....the tap was frozen so I couldn't hose her off...and there was no way I was turning up at British Dressage with legs covered in mud. I dragged her back in and she promptly fell asleep as she had obviously had a hard night!!! She had trashed all the breakfast haynets, pooped everywhere and had a jolly old time....I bet Tilly was going mad!!! So I rang Peter and had a bit of a paddy, did my mucking out and by 9am the tap at the top of the garden had defrosted so I had to move the hosepipe and tie her to a plank of wood and hose her in the garden......Very non BHS!!!!
We trundled down the hill to Myerscough and our first test was P19 which was good. Bless her she cantered two strides early on the right rein as I must have sat ready to ask her and she nearly jogged in the medium walk when I gave her a boot to wake her up! But we managed to scrape 65% and a third place. We then did the N39 which I have never done before and had not even practised....I can't remember the last time we did 10m circles and the like!!!! So a quick run through some movements in the working in and a little chat about our canter/ trot/ canter transitions and they called our names! It did ride a lot better than I thought and she went well all things considered and we got a respectful 65.86% so gained 3 more dressage points.
After returning home on Saturday, Alex and I had a late lunch and then rode Tilly and Millie. We popped round to the school so that Alex could have a canter and remember what it was all about! I had not ridden Tilly for a week and she was on one but Millie topped the day with a lovely flat out bucking session down the school with Alex....I just kept shouting 'sit up, sit up' and Millie headed for the gate which is where Tilly was. Fantastic riding by Alex I do have to say!!!!
On Sunday we took Tilly upto Helens and did some jumping in her school, we put a course of three small jumps up and apart from a little breakage (one pole) Tilly was a star. She took a flyer at a couple but then I asked her to wait for me and as you can see in the video above she obliged! There is some clear round jumping at Myerscough on Sunday that we may go to....need to check with Peter first and then we are hopefully heading to Somerford on 29th for some xc schooling....fingers crossed she can cope with the increase in her work. It is so exciting!!!
