I’m sitting here writing this, looking out of the window at yet more rain, while my parents have just flown off to St Lucia in the Carribean for a week’s holiday… I’m rather jealous to say the least!
It has been a busy few weeks as the boys step up their work for the beginning of the season and I’ve still been riding out for my brother, trainer Harry Fry, in the mornings.
I have had a couple of really good lessons with Emma Fisher. Kitkat (Another Breakfast) is looking and feeling extremely well. Emma and I don’t think we have ever seen him looking so big and strong so it’s great that the strengthening work I’ve been doing all winter with him has been paying off.
Archie, my 5-year-old (pictured above, looking like butter wouldn’t melt), is quickly getting a name for himself as the naughty one. We went to West Wilts for some event dressage this week, my 1st competition of 2014 and Archie’s 1st ever time in a dressage arena.
However, it really didn’t start very well as I had only been on him 10min when he spectacularly bucked me off in the warm-up! Thankfully he managed to contain himself in the arena and apart from a few spooks and general greenness he didn’t disgrace himself at all and scored 70%. He will be going to lots more of these unaffiliated competitions to get experience in an arena and I just hope he begins to behave himself better!
I also took Kitkat and he did a couple of intermediate tests. In the 1st test he was a bit excited to be at a party so didn’t behave particularly well, but he was much improved and more settled in the 2nd test. He also will be having a good few dressage outings before his first event.
He, however, has also been in the bad books as he bit me extremely hard on my thigh while I was rugging him up the other day. Quite a bruise (right)! He is very prone to taking a good nip at you and I’m normally quick enough that I get out of the way in time, but he got me good and proper!
I have just booked in with Carolyne Ryan-Bell to spend 2 weeks training with her at the beginning of February. I have been up to stay with my horses in the summer a couple of weeks at a time for the past few years now and have found it really valuable. She is good at picking up on my bad habits and we do a lot of work on my riding as well as the way the horses are going. So it will be really good to get some serious training in and have both me and the horses firing on all cylinders for the start of the season.
I will hopefully have some exciting news to report in my next blog about a new equine member who is joining the team, so watch this space!
Rosie
