Emerald Park: December 2008

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Well here you go. Judith actually jumps. What was she thinking?? It took a glass of Champagne and much urging. It was the first time Judith had jumped in a competition (if you could call it that??) in 10 years! The jumps were a huge 70cm at the most and you can see that Finn is making such a huge effort to make sure Mum is holding on tight (look at his ears - Are you sure you are OK up there mum??? ) Judith on the other hand is overdoing it somewhat. I wonder what Dale Pederson would critique this as??? Haha. And we were third in the Walk trot canter Jump. See you at the next Olympic SJ?? :)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Auckland Dressage Champs

Its very annoying that I cannot get these pictures to publish in order but this is the famous run out. To the left my nice canter circle, above, The shoulder popping as we come around the corner and the third, The Famous I am leaving! All caught on film by my son. Not funny at the time but funny when I look at the pics and see how it happaned.

Our first test was an absolute cracker. Finn felt brilliant. He was soft, forward and obediant. I knew when I finished that it was a beauty. When my score went up I was over the moon. 75.385. At that point we were in first place and I was very excited. But of course some of the better horses were after me and we slipped to 4th place. I was pretty chuffed at that as there were some very nice horses in the class. We had an hour and a half break before the second test and I warmed up conservatively. The ground was rock hard and it was hot. He was a little less soft than the first test but Ok. We started our first canter circle and all good and then the shoulder went out and next minute he was jumping out of the gate at A. I sat outside the gate in absolute horror. I have never ever had a horse do that to me before! Norty norty Finn. I had absolutely no idea what happaned until I saw the pics my son had taken. Evidence! Its really clear in the second pic that his shoulder popped and I did nothing to fix it. All my fault. Lesson learned!!!!
Sunday we had an early start and this was our Challenge test this time on the bark arena. Finn was warming up nicely and I had 5 minutes to go before my test when an official came onto the bark and stopped me in the middle of a canter and bawled me out for being on the bark too early! WHAT?? Apparently they were running late and I was supposed to know that! There were only 3 horse in the warmup and one of them was the horse before me. I was not supposed to be in there until she had started her test. How the heck were we supposed to know that they were running late. I was really upset and Finn picked up on it and started to jack up. He completely tensed up and refused to go forward. I had 5 minutes to calm down before my test but it was gone. We went into the arena Halted at X and ran backwards at a rate of knots, we then turned left instead of right. My head was completely in another space. The rest of the test was abyssmal with lots of mistakes and a huge amount of tension.
Berlyddy Bitch that did this to me. 51 % Ouchies. Even the judge said It was entirely uneccessary of the official to do this to me. It completley ruined my test. Of course I should not have got upset but she really went on about How I was supposed to know they were running late! How I have no idea. There were no announcements.
Oh well write that off and get on with the next test. I had 4 hours to calm myself down and it took me at least two hours to get over my fury!
For the last test I hardly warmed up at all. Finn was really feeling the ground by now and was tired. It was all I could do to keep him going forward in the test. 64 % and 9th place out of 31 so not too bad really.

It was great to catch up with Shiwon and meet her lovely boys Da Vinci and Gosh.