July and Burgaham

I can't believe it is the end of July already!

We had a good runs at Aston le Walls with Pickle and Harper making easy work of their first Intermediate runs.  Roo did a fabulous dressage in the Advanced and was over fresh show jumping - it had always been the intention not to run her XC.

As Roo hadn't run since Bramham, we took her show jumping on the way up to Burgham in the hopes that this would help relax her a little bit more.  At Burgham she had really rather a nice start to the dressage but she added a few extra changes in the canter work which sadly dropped her score. In the show jumping she warmed up well but towards the end of the course began to get rather over excited and buzzy losing her shape a bit jumping, which was a shame.  She was very excited to be going cross country and made very easy work of the course, giving Sarah an enjoyable ride round.  There were still things to be learnt from the run: a combination of not quite the right set up going into the first water and Roo not having got her toes wet wince Bramham led to a bit of  blip in an otherwise great outing. Nothing particularly worrying as she was super around the rest of it but a good lesson learnt - when actually her score wasn't going to be competitive anyway.

Harper did a nice Dressage test but made one little mistake in the 2* but showed a very pleasing attitude considering it was her first run at a bigger competition.  She was show jumping really well but just a little bit of a look elsewhere caused a rail down - a shame as the rest of the round was good and she followed it by jumping a really nice, steady round cross country.  So for her education at that level and having run round her first intermediate last week, the team were really pleased with her.

All the other ponies are well and entries are already in for august.  Sarah is setting off for Bishop's Burton as the Eastern Coach for the East Youth Championships.