Kelsall Hill BE90

Today Pete and I completed our second BE90 event, at Kelsall Hill. Today has been a day of mixed fortunes, but on the whole I am very pleased with the improvement Pete has made in such a short time in the croos country.

We had a very early start as we were the second to go in our section, with our dressage being at 8.06am. Pete was a little uptight warming up and unfortunately it didnt get much better in the test! Despite usually being very un-spooky usually, he took a dislike to the judges car and for the first half of the test he was very tense. He improved as the test went on to score 37.5 and gaining the comment 'a varied test' from the judge!

Onto the showjumping, and although it was much smaller than we are used to jumping, I was worried that Pete would not try and knock some down! He got a bit stressed in the warm up today and decided to run sideways then backwards until I could calm him down. Im not sure what upset him but he is very sensitive so the best way of dealing with it is to give him time and walk him round to allow him to settle then I took him in the ring. He jumped well although Hhe did give two fences a tap but luckily the poles stayed in place to give us a clear round.to the

Onto the cross country, which was a beautifully built course. I had decided to go the direct routes at the trackhener and corner if all was going well. After a little paddy in the start box when Pete again decided to run backwards, we set off.

He felt much more confident over the first part of the course, and flew the trackhener which I was pleased about. He was fantastic through the water this time, had barely a hesitation, and was straight as a dye over the corner. As we headed toward home he jumped the large hedge really well and onto the last question on the course, a hanging log down a dip and over an open ditch. I steadied up to jump the log to give him time to see the ditch so it didnt take him by surprise. Despite my best effort, he saw the ditch 3 strides out and dived to the left giving us 20 penalties right at the end of the course :( he jumped it on the second attempt and finished confidently. I was a little disappointed although he was much, much more confident than our first cross country at Bold in August.

So all in all, a good day. That was the last event of the season so next year hopefully we can built on our experience and become more competitive!