First Blue Chip Qualifer

Today we went to Aintree to jump the Blue Chip Power Qualifier.

I decided to jump the 1.05 as a warm up and Pete jumped clear in the first round although he was a little bit idle, then in the jump off i decided to try and test his against the clock. Unfortunately he lost his jump and became careless and had 2 fences down on a related distance.

I then went in the Power qualifer, which was quite a full up 1.10. Unfortunately I made a mistake at fence 3 and added a stride and put him a bit deep into the oxer so he had it down. Was cross with myself because it was totally my fault. Ah well never mind we have another couple of chances to qualify yet.

Pete's on Fire!!

Today we took Pete to Southview our local venue to jump the Newcomers in preparation for the Blue Chip qualifiers starting. Pete and I haven't jumped for 3 weeks due to Mums holiday and me suffering from a bout of Sinusitis.

We arrived just in time as the Discovery was finishing. I stupidly thought it was going to be quite quiet as I was only the 24th entry at this time. However, by the time I had gone to declare it had got much busier, and I put my name to jump 17th, giving me enough time to warm Pete up as Mum had got him ready for me whilst I walked the course (super groom!).

The course was straightforward and the only fence I was a little worried about was a rustic square oxer as I thought he was most likely to have it down. This is because of the way horses see colour, it is much easier for them to distinguish black and white, other colours merge and are not clear for them to see. This type of fence or any pole that doesnt have 'bands' of colour, i.e blue and white, red and white etc need to be treated with a little more care so the horse can see what he is jumoing better..

Anyway, Pete warmed up really well and was pinging his fences. We went in the ring and he was jumping great and I gave him an extra squeeze over the rustic, and as he is so sensitive he did a cheeky little kick back and had a little argument with me on the corner! He is so cheeky. He got a little bit buzzy down the last line of fences but he held his concentration to jump CLEAR! I was so pleased he is really getting consistant at 1.10m level now.

After hours of waiting for the jump off (the entries had reached 60 by this point!) Pete and I were drawn 9th of the 17 clears to jump off. I decided to gamble on a steady clear as there had not been many clears before me. Pete jumped his little socks off over the 1.20 course for a double clear!!! I was made up with him. He went into 2nd at that point but I had a lot of pro riders to follow us. In the end we finished 7th, there was 8 double clears and 10 prizes so we won £17 and we were about the only amatuers in the line up!