Woodhill Sands Dressage Day 2

After the bad week of nursing the sick ewe,feeding orpaned lambs and a very sore back I did not hold out much hope for today. :( Finn was first up and right from the minute I got on him things were not good. A lack of work all week had not put him in the frame of mind for competition. He was so behind the leg,leaning on the bit,crooked and just downright not in the mood. His first test was very ordinary and he managed a 5th place. The second test he had just given up entirely. It was all over the place. 13th place. How embarassing!
Pumpkin was up next and was surprisingly not too bad considering his lack of work all week. But he seemed to have completely forgotton how to do travers so we had to do some last minute schooling. So in our first test we had lots of travers (at every gait) offered even though it was not called for. :( Pretty ordinary test all up though for 2nd place. The second test was a heap better and we managed to do both travers very nicely for 7s. Another second place so he at least made up for Finns bad mood. The back held up reasonably well with me well primed with painkillers but in the rider comments on one test the comments were riders back lacking suppleness. Hardly suprising really. Lifting 80 kg sheep is not recommended for back health!

I am officially over Winter !!!

Its been a bad week the last one. The sheep have been lambing and although all have been doing well with twinning births one of the ewes went down on Monday and could not get up. Liam and I hoisted her onto and trolley and ferried her down to the stables where she was nursed through the week. On Thursday she produced twin lambs but showed no signs of getting up. All efforts to entice her to eat were fruitless. I tried everything I could think of and apart from Ketol and molassed water she ate nothing. On Friday I hauled her back on the trolley and put her outside on the grass hoping that might entice her to eat what was around her but sadly she did not. Today Sunday we had to make the decision to put her to rest. I have been feeding her twin lambs since birth as she had no milk even if she could stand to feed them.
With all the nursing and lamb feeding riding time has been difficult added to the fact that I wrenched my back picking her up and putting her on the trolley. I could only hack on Friday as my back was too sore and as I had a show to prep for this weekend things were not looking promising.

Winter YUK.

There has not been much to report in the last week. It was planned that we would go to the Showjumping at Woodhill Sands yesterday but as it hailed 5 times on Saturday we decided not to go. A pic of Babe just because theres nothing else to post.