Happy New Year everybody!! Hope you all had a lovely time over Christmas and celebrating the beginning of 2023.
Back in December, I successfully qualified for Winter Regionals at Advanced Medium Gold level, which is amazing. I also attended both dressage performances at The London International Horse Show at The Excel Centre in London. It was incredible to watch some of the top riders in the world compete, including Lottie Fry, Gareth Hughes and Abi Lyle. The freestyle night was incredible. I was utterly speechless at Lottie and Glamourdale’s 90.635% performance. I left the arena feeling inspired and it made me want to follow my dreams even more.
I had a lovely Christmas and New Year spent with family and friends. I worked over Christmas, but it was fun to spend time with my ‘second family’ at the yard. I celebrated the New Year at home, having a lovely time relaxing and preparing for a busy January.
In January, we were fortunate to have training with a top international judge. Beanie felt better than ever after his Christmas break. I competed at Onley on Friday 13th January and was super happy with both tests; scoring just under 69% in AM91 and 67.8% in AM98. This is the test I will be riding at the winter regionals at the end of January. I received more consistent marks across the board plus a few 8’s, which was great.
The cold weather has been against us for a couple of weeks and training has been difficult with a frozen arena. We’ve been enjoying some lovely hacks and plenty of walking. We’re all keeping fingers crossed for the upcoming regionals. I will let you know how I get on.
It was lovely to spend time with my 5-year-old Hanoverian ’Dennis’ last week. He’s definitely grown! I can’t wait to start riding him again in the spring and being able to include him in my future blogs. I’m excited for the year ahead!
I’ve completed Module 7 and 8 on my apprenticeship which were about ridden and non-ridden exercise. This has been really interesting to learn about and my Trainer Coach, Jess, has been fantastic at helping me learn each module, as always.
Looking forwards to telling you all about my Regionals in my next blog!