Posts Written By Chloë

We went for our 2nd SJ schooling session at Hoplands last Saturday, and managed to build on the success of the last outing. We had a few ‘yes’ ‘no’ ‘maybe’ moments to begin with as I had failed to establish an active enough canter. I find it really hard to feel on Soap when he is in the correct SJing canter as he is just so comfortable in all his ‘special versions of canter’, but when he dropped into the right soft, but active canter he began snorting in time with the stride. This ‘SJ Snorting’ is a huge help…

A few miles down the road from my house is a new tack shop called ‘Trotters’ (and yes they are independant traders!) Allison at Trotters has kindly agreed to sponsor me! Hopefully with them being so local I can help them out in return by good old word of mouth, flyers, and through my local horsey connections. I think Allison was taking a big risk with her profit margins when she emailed me and said ‘just pop into the shop and see if there’s anything you need’ The words ‘supermarket sweep’ sprung to mind! She very kindly supplied me with…

Apologies blog readers for the recent quite spell from GHE, in the run up to West Wilts BE100 I unfortunately went down with Swine Flu! I was not relishing the concept of competing while still fighting off the bug so was half relieved and half disappointed when West Wilts was cancelled because of the ridiculous amounts of rain we’ve been having here in Wiltshire. To cheer myself up I have entered Soap in the BE100 at Highclere. It’s an event I have wanted to do for ages so I’m really excited about it.

Well yet another wet SJ schooling session, where has the summer gone?… Despite the gopping weather we had another very constructive lesson with Robert. We started by leg yielding to make sure Soap was off the leg and moving his quarters, this then progressed to a small 3 loop serpentine where the middle loop is done in counter bend. This exercise was very useful to shorten Soap up and engage, once we had achieved that we moved on to canter from walk transitions to make him quick off the leg. The transitions had to be from a slow steady walk…

So after 2 false starts due to missing shoes and pulled bottom muscles (the horse not me!) we finally made it to Hoplands for some sj schooling and not a minute too soon as the previous day I had stupidly over-bitted Soap in an attempt to gain some control and as a result ruined his confidence to go forward into the contact. I feel awful for denting his confidence as he is so honest and willing, but I guess on the up side we overcame the issue whilst schooling today and this lesson now learnt will NEVER be repeated. So…

I am a bit of a stickler for matching XC colours and I have been on the look out for a new top to go under my back protector for a while when I came across a Canterbury base layer (like Ruth Edge wears!) in the exact same colour, even better you can get them personalised so guess what I had printed on my left sleeve?…..gifthorseeventing.co.uk!!!! snazzy huh?…

After time off due to a strained muscle, then brilliant but quite radical re-shoeing which made Soap ‘footy’ for over a week (cue me franticly dunking his feet in buckets of ice at every opportunity!) we ended up with just 3 days to prepare for our first ever PN level ODE! Not quite the run up to it I had planned! I spent the 3 days running through the BE Novice 111 dressage test we had to do which included counter canter, medium trot/canter, and rein back (none of these movements Soap is established in or has ever done in…

There is a lovely local show held every year by the Tedworth Hunt and even though I’m not a big fan of showing I usually go to do the odd class and a dressage test because it’s such a friendly and well run local event. My other half came along to take pics, and my friend took her young horse too for the experience. Here we are getting ready searching for the correct studs, and meticulously applying my quarter marks! Check out my Mountain Horse togs, very snazzy, but far too ‘look at me’ for the show ring! Into the…

I got home the other day to find a huge brown box with my name on it waiting for me! I was worried at first that maybe I had begun ‘sleep shopping’ and had been indulging in some nocturnal bidding on eBay, but thank fully it was a whole host of goodies form my sponsor Mountain Horse! Angie at Mountain Horse had posted me a load of lovely summer products including lightweight breeches, t-shirts, baseball cap, zippy top, and best of all some gorgeous leather long boots and the corresponding stirrups! I think Angie must be a mind reader as…

Hacking Soap out in walk to aid the recovery of his strained muscle is very dull so to kill two birds with one stone I invited my friend Shelly to hack out with me so that I could get both horses exercised, and have a bit of a catch up with her! Soap was feeling very michevious and as we were leaving the yard he decided that the little pony coming the other way was just too scary, and so he shot off back down the road bucking!!!! You can see the moment just before he turned tail in the…