Poor Skysie..... :-(

So recently, young Skyfaxa has finally started to get her act together. After her little strop at the TREC the other week, we weren't expecting too much when we went back to the stables for the half term fun show. To be on the safe side, I entered her in the mini jumping class, and Ali was fully expecting to be beaten by a four year old on a lead rein.

But no, Missy decided she'd be fine with going into the indoor school this time and actually made an effort to jump some of the (tiny) obstacles!

Which meant we felt a bit guilty entering a 13 year old against the tinies, we had to explain why to the other parents, some of whom, having jumped round alongside their 4 year old bouncing about on a small hairy pony, were giving us frosty looks and muttering about unfairness.....especially when it turned out Sky had won!

So Ali immediately started planning more stuff to do, after all, she's rising 5 and will be capable of a bit more than last year when, as always, there's a setback. She came in looking a bit short in front the other night and the next morning was definitely lame in her near fore. Nothing obvious form looking at the hoof, but I suspect there's an abscess brewing. Given our previous experiences with getting them dug out, and the conditions in the field right now, we've decided to just leave it to work its own way out. I think I'm with Joe Camp on this anyway....

Clever girls.....

Really, really proud of Seraphina, she did two clear rounds at the competition today :-)

The first was in the 50cm preparatoire which is basically clear round jumping, there were only 3 clears out of 17 entries, Ali was dead chuffed to get a little trophy. Then she did the pony 5 class which was 65cms and they went clear but didn't win.

Fina was really well behaved today, Ali rode her in the bitless bridle and there was a lot less arguing than last time when she has a bit in. She didn't like the look of one of the jumps and hesitated but Ali got her over, she put in a massive jump though and Ali did well to stay on

Here's the vid of her second class

And for once, it didn't rain!

We won a TREC!

Well yesterday we did our first official TREC competition, just at club level which is the lowest level......and we won! And no, we weren't the only team in the competition.....

First up in the morning was the PTV, the Parcours en Terrain Varié or obstacle course as we know it. We had to do a slalom, a maniabilité test which was a pretty narrow s shape to negociate between poles, Gandalf had to do turns on the forehand to get round!

Then there was a little log which most people jumped, but we stepped over, then ride up a slope, dismount, lead down a slope, get back on with the horse standing in a circle which it musn't move out of, over a little brush jump (or walk, in Gandalf's case, Ches jumped it though!) get off again, lead over a bridge, then the horse had to stand in a circle and not move for 10 seconds (immobilité) whilst the rider walked away, G & C very good at this due to grass being available to eat! Then we had to get back on, ride through a "passerelle", a corridor of poles, one wide one and one narrow one, then more immobilité but mounted this time.

Some pics (courtesy of Stewart!)

After that was the Maitrise des Allures, or control of paces. You have to canter down a track as slowly as possible and walk back along it as fast as possible. We definitely need more practise!! Gandalf started off OK at the canter but down the end was spooked by a dog and shot off the track in a bid to get back to the other horses, I got him back on track but he dropped to a trot so we lost all our points......and Ches refused to canter at all so didn't get any points either! 

In the afternoon we did the POR, Parcours d'Orientation, the map reading bit. We went wrong a couple of times, one of the tracks was really overgrown so we missed it at first but we got there in the end, and managed to find the "balises", the little clips you have to mark your card with en route. We were in a team with Jo on Socianda and a French girl on a huge grey Selle Francais, so our boys had to do a fair bit of trotting to keep up!!

And of course, a pic of the trophy!