It seems like a very long time ago now that I entered a BE CDT day in March to kick off our season, after that day inspired and eager to have a productive year I wrote down my aims for 2009, you can see the original post here, and to recap my aims were…
MY AIMS FOR 2009
Dressage – to gain a score(s) in the low 30’s
SJ – to get a clear(s) round (with or without time faults)
XC – to get a clear(s) round inside the time
Overall – to be placed at Intro and move up to PN by the end of the season if all is going well.
So….at our 2nd event we managed to gain a 31 dressage which almost made me fall off with shock in the SJing when they read out the score! Soap produced good tests all season and although we didn’t gain a score quite that low again he was consistently in the top 10-15 after the dressage all season, and produced some lovely attentive competitive tests. Well we have battled all year with our SJing and in desperation after a terrible time at Highclere I sent him to my SJ instructor on a 9 day boot camp which made a huge difference to him. We managed to achieve 2 clear rounds at unaffiliated SJing but the best result we have had eventing was 2 down at Milton Keynes 3 day, and I am still kicking myself for screwing up the last double as it was so nearly a clear round! XC as always he has been a total dream, bold, fast, confident, and just loving every minute of it (with the sole except of his last hunter trial at WWEC where he tied up due to virus) he picked up just 1.2 time penalties at Tweseldown his first event of the season and was then fault free, and foot perfect for the rest of the year, we really do love our XC!
Towards the end of the season where we planned to make the transition from intro/BE90 to PreNovice/BE100 things didn’t quite go according to plan, we managed to do several BE100 tests and XC tracks with good scores and clear rounds, but the BE events we had planned to enter were cancelled so I rerouted him to do our first 3 day instead. I had planned to finish with Moreton BE100 but because he had had a virus and tied up the previous weekend I thought it best to call it a day, give him his end of season physio, and a little holiday before his winter season of dressage and SJing begins.
I am really pleased with how he has progressed this year, and hopefully with a winter of SJ practise we will be even more competitive next season. I had hoped to have done more with Jack only managing to take him to one low key dressage test (gaining 60% and 3rd place) but his feet/soundness problems have now been solved, and I am looking forward to cracking on with his re-schooling this winter, and making his eventing debut next year! So it’s onwards and upwards for GHE, I am looking forward to 2010, competing both my horses, promoting old and new sponsors, cracking Soap’s SJing and getting that elusive placing!