With the awful weather of late, our new show season has got off to a pretty slow start. I’m not sure about anyone else but I could barely find the motivation over the last few weeks to ride, let alone dig out my jacket and jods and head off to a show.
However with the babies having been to a practice clinic, and the winter championships looming, we thought we should venture out. Luckily our classes at our first show of the season were in the afternoon so there was no early start.
We had decided to take Warwick, my young New Forest stallion (pictured), for his first ever outing to do the ‘pure novice’ class, but really just to give him a go round and see what he was like. We also took Sovereign, my Mum’s roan Welsh B, to do the novice class, which was his first show since last October. Luckily all my clothes still fitted — it seems a long long time ago that I last had my jacket on!
Sovereign was in first in his novice class. He had turned a strange colour over the past week, but he went into the ring like he hadn’t had a break. He duly won the class, picking up his novice ticket and keeping his halo firmly intact.
At the last minute we decided to do the novice class with Warwick too, so he could have some more schooling in the ring. I thought there would only be a few ponies in the class, but typically it turned out to be quite a big class in quite a small ring, so extra challenging for him!
I was thrilled with how he coped with the other ponies around him. He didn’t react to them or spook at anything. We headed out to do our show and put in a pretty babyish performance. Our canter transitions are not quite polished yet, so we struggled to hit these straight away, but we ended up fourth and I was just thrilled with how he coped.
After waiting around for a while we heading back in for our ‘pure novice’ class. Warwick was lovely going round with all the ponies in there, stood in line well and then we were off to do our show. This time I gave him more room for his canters and he was spot on. Still a little novicey, but much better than our first attempt. We finished second and picked up our winter ticket for that class, which was brilliant.
I was really pleased with how he went in the ring as you never know with youngsters how they are going to be. It was a great start so fingers crossed he will get better and better. So that is one baby out for his first time, next weekend I think will be Bertie’s (Welsh C) first time out (weather permitting) so keep your fingers crossed!
Chloe
