Hi All

I’m on a roll with this blogging now!  Just need to find time to update the website design etc but thats a job for John I feel!

Headed to Dalkeith last Saturday for our first run in the Open Novice.  I was a little nervous but not unduly worried, more nerves due to it being our first outing. I bounced out of bed on Saturday morning, and set off to get ready.  After mucking out, bathing, plaiting, sorting stud holes and getting the lorry ready I felt a bit odd as I am normal having to leave at a ridiculously early time and I didn’t have to load up until 11am!  weird!

Headed off to my most local event at Dalkeith Park, and the sun was shining, parked up, collected my number and headed off to walk the XC.

We ambled back to the lorry to tack up for the Dressage, Classy had been happily munching and slurping away in the lorry and looked pretty happy with himself.  Not as happy as he was when he found out he was eventing though - he lit up, and spend a wee while jogging sideways all the way to the dressage arenas.  The excitement at being at a horse trials was just too much, and I couldn’t get him to stay calm enough for his test and we ended up on 40.3 to be tailing the section after the first phase.  He is such a fun horse, I just need to work out how best to calm him (blind fold and ear plugs maybe?!)

Dressage over, now for the fun bit!

Video here: http://youtu.be/PGd0cPldY-Q

Off to our show jumping, and Classy was super keen and once in the ring he knew he was there for fun jumping.  He popped round for one fence down which was totally my fault.

Video here:  http://youtu.be/YH3UMDDCWAI

Big pats and a quick change to head down to XC start.  Its been a long time since I have heard the 5-4-3-2-1 but we were off and what a fantastic ride round the XC he gave me. Classy is a superstar, and deserves to win medals pinging everything on the course to come home for 1.6 time penalties (I didn’t wear a watch as I just wanted to get to know him and let him run at his own pace), he finished full of running, and both of us with a big grin!

Our final result was 13th place, which I think isn’t too bad for our first attempt.  Heading to Warwick in a couple of weeks and have a BD outing planned in the meantime.

Love these photos taken by John on the XC.

Fence 7a

Fence 7b

On the way to the water

Fence 13a

Potato box fence 16 (a bit blurry but you can still see Classy is loving it!)

On the Sunday I returned to Dalkeith to help for the day, I found out on arrival that I would need to use some maths - this is not my strong point and I spent the first half an hour in sheer panic! 

I was calculating XC times and penalties! EEK!!

However in reality it wasn’t actually that bad!  The starter sent most riders off at the ’00’ seconds so that we were able to easily work out how long it had taken everyone to ride round, and we had a penalites crib sheet to review for time faults.  Phew! It was a long day (started at 9.30am and finished after 6.30pm) but really enjoyable.  Meeting everyone as they headed off to XC was great, and I got to watch Jack storming round with his current rider Danielle as well as cheering on several people I knew.  Dalkeith horse trials people supplied us regularly with tea and coffee which was received gratefully as it was a bit chilly in the start box, however I sorted that out by wearing walking trousers under my jeans!  In future, I will remember to take more layers - as it had been so hot the day before I went with the plan it would be repeated - not to self - never pack the sun cream  if you want the sun to stay out!

Fun day, glad to help, and very enjoyable company!