Acrobatics at Kent County & Roxie's Back...!

​I had a long weekend, with Friday off work which was nice, although it was a busy day with shopping and competing at the Kent County Show.  I had been asked to ride a young horse belonging to Mrs Marietta Fox-Pitt in the Young Sport Horse Show class. Sandy is a 4 year old race horse who raced for the first time last year and is getting her career of to a great start with good placings. We took her to Kent County so she could gain a bit more competition experience. To start with she found it all incredibly exciting and performed quite a few acrobatic displays.....good job I'd put my 'sticky bum' jods in, keeping me stuck to the saddle thankfully! As the class went on though she began to settle and performed a nice individual show. Sandy did a very nice trot up for the judge.....I think I looked quite entertaining at this point 'sprinting' along next to her! By the end, Sandy was standing quietly in the line showing how much she had learnt from the whole experience. We finished in 4th place and received lovely positive comments from the judge and had she behaved slightly better she would have been much higher up the placings which was nice to hear. We were all very pleased with how she did though. :)

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​Saturday was a day at home, getting Roxie and Milli ready for the Riding Club Area showjumping Qualifier at Felbridge the next day. This was a competition I was very much looking forward to, more so on Roxie's side as this was her first competition back out jumping since our fall which was two years ago.....how time flies.

​Roxie and Milli haven't been out to a competition together since our very long day at Tweseldown back in June 2014, where poor Milli ending up standing on the box for some time whilst Roxie was being looked at and stabilised at Bell Equine! Anyway, back to the competition at Felbridge, and Roxie was first to jump. We were doing the senior jumping and style qualifier, where you have to do a short show before hand to show the judges a bit of trot and canter on both reins before they ring the bell and you can begin to jump your round. As I was travelling there it started raining which made me slightly anxious as Roxie is still bare foot at the moment and didn't want her to slip on the grass. She felt happy on the ground in the warm up so in we went and did our individual show bit which I'm sure Roxie enjoyed and then began jumping our round. The turn from fence 1 to 2 was very tight and we had a bit of a near miss and slipped as we made the turn. Roxie recovered very well and went on to jump a really good round and CLEAR! It wasn't very big, only 85cm but with Roxie's injury to her knee I know she isn't going to go out and do what she did before hand so my main aim for her now is to take her out and enjoy doing what she is still able to do.

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​We had to wait a little while for the scores to go up and when I looked they were all very tight with marks ranging from 66 to 70! I was over the moon when our score of 82 went up, Roxie had won!!  This means we have qualified for the Riding Club National Championships in September which is rather exciting! For more pictures and a video please Click Here!

Following the prize giving Milli was next and she wasn't the usual Milli that was for sure! I'm not sure if it was the excitement of being out with Roxie that got the better of her or going somewhere new as she hasn't jumped a Felbridge since she was 4 years old and the main ring is lower than the ground around it, with a big lake type bit in the middle so it can be quite daunting. Milli just got a bit anxious and felt like a four year old again! Possibly because she hasn't been out competing for the last year, so I have now decided to back off with the bigger classes and take her out to jump some Discovery height classes so she finds it easy and enjoys it.

​SG Equestrian
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***Keep Calm & Canter On***​​