…..Cala Russell! Congratulations Cala the random number generator picked you as the 12th comment number from the 31 entries and so you are the winner! If you email me the address you want your prize sent to I’ll package the jacket up and pop it in the post asap! Congratulations and enjoy!
In preparation for the Area Festivals on Sunday 26th August my mega instructor Amanda Brewer recommended that I book Dustry an appointment with Becky Dean. Becky is an equine Shiatsu practitioner and has a very enviable client list comprising top level racing, showing, eventing, and hunting yards. I am always a little sceptical about things like this because I am aware there are a lot of quacks out there selling ‘snake oil’ but given that Amanda uses and recommended her I knew she must be good! What I didn’t realise was how good she was until I schooled Dustry last night! He has never…
I am excited to announce that I have a lovely new sponsor! NAF (Natural Animal Feeds) are sponsoring me with their lovely products in return for first hand product reviews. This is fab news for me because there are so many ‘lotions and potions’ on the market sometimes it is hard to pick between what actually works and what is just packaged/priced more attractively than the next product on the shelf! 😉 Trialling NAF’s range of supplements and products will allow me to see for myself first hand what works well for me and my horse. I have used numerous…
Well today I took Dustry for his 3rd ever dressage outing, back to Sparsholt again for their unaffiliated dressage. Yesterday we had an EPIC lesson and it was serious hard work, but he produced some of his best work to date, and so I think he was feeling the impact of this effort today as he was unusually a bit inconsistent in the contact. His first test (Prelim 19) contained some lovely trot work, and a really good ‘stretch on a 20m circle in working trot’ scoring him an 8! but it was miles off the quality of work we get at…
So today I took Dustry for his 2nd BD competition although we are still competing unregistered, but after today’s result maybe it’s time to get a BD membership?… We had prelim 15 and prelim 19 tests, the same as our last dressage outing. After a few ‘whizzy’ moments in the warm up (forgot red tail ribbon and Dustry does not appreciate people entering his personal space!) we went to do our first test. He was so much calmer and attentive in the area away from the other horses and hustle and bustle of the warm up, and produced a lovely test. No green baby wobbliness like last…
My lovely sponsors at Mountain Horse have agreed to let me give away a jacket from my latest delivery of sponsorship goodies to 1 lucky GHE fan! Up for grabs is a Mountain Horse ‘Grace’ jacket in medium (size 10/12) , it comes in a very stylish dark brown and anthracite colour scheme. RRP £120! To be in with a chance of winning it you need to jump through the following hoops… 1/ go to facebook and ‘like’ the GHE facebook page 2/go to facebook and ‘like’ the Mountain Horse facebook page 3/Leave a comment on this blog post…
For weeks now my instructor Amanda Brewer has been asking me if I have been doing my ‘homework reading’ and up until today I had guiltily been avoiding picking up the rather dull and boring looking book she had recommended that I read, what a mistake! This book is probably the most sensible, insightful, and philosophical work I have ever read about dressage training and how to build a harmonious and successful partnership between horse and rider. I wish I had started reading it years ago! The book is called ‘Dressage In Harmony’ – from basic to grand prix by Walter Zettle. It is book No4…
So seeing as I have had such great success with a new product I thought it only fair to share my latest secret weapon with GHE fans! Dustry has a bad habit of scrunching on his bit at times when working. It’s not through tension or pain, it’s just a left over bad habit from his racing days, and up until now I have just ignored it, but now that we are starting to get out and about competing it needs to be stopped, because it will cost us valuable marks in the dressage phase if the judge hears him scrunching on his bit it will…
So today was Dustry’s first ‘grown up competition’. Over 7 months ago now he went for his first ever dressage test a walk and trot test at a low key local centre, so it was almost like his dressage début all over again!. We went to do 2 long arena prelims 15 and 19, but mainly we went to behave, warm up well, get through the tests, and generally have a positive educational day. I set my alarm for 4.45 (I think this is a first!) and we were on the road by 6am, primed, prepped, and plaited. Super groom Kate came…
So Dustry seems to have recovered from his illness enough to begin working again, but to be on the safe side he is getting more days off than usual during a week just to make sure he doesn’t get too pooped by being worked again (judging from the divots I found all across his field the other day he has plenty of energy!) Today I took him for a lesson to help get us back on track and re-focused. We planned to have a fairly short lesson to make sure he wasn’t overworked, and spent the time running through…