The lovely ladies over at Pinks Pet Sitters looked after Erik brilliantly, highly recommend them for your pet and horse sitting needs..
Any way, I got back at 3am on Saturday morning but with that in mind and not having jumped any cross country fences yet (my jump saddle is being fixed) I thought better of taking Erik to Horseheath unaffiliated hunter trial cross country but with B an old pro now Georgie and I got him ready and loaded up in a flash on Saturday afternoon.
With no official times to go by it's always hard to know when to get to an event so while we brushed and got B ready we had a text to say only 25 people left to go in the class before. I said to G get herself pretty much completely ready while I put boots etc on B and loaded him in the trainer. As fast as safely we could go we travelled to Horseheath in good time so while G went and had her hat and back protector checked I tacked up B. It's safe to say he absolutely knew what he was there to to and was a little tinker being walked around but in no time at all G was back and with a quick girth tighten and a leg up she was on!
G certainly had his game face on in the warm up and looked every bit an eventer, or so I'm told from kind strangers who walked passed and said how awesome he looked! As it was a non BE or pony club event I had got permission for Georgie to wear her hat cam and we certainly got some cool footage.
Read on for how they got on and to view the footage below!
At the start Georgie was in the start box and ready to go so I ran off on to the course with my DSLR to get some photos! I'd got it all charged up, long lens on and ready go so while they made their way round I clicked away excited to see my photos!
Georgie and B really do have the best partnership and he's so confident with jumping they were absolutely flying round making easy work of the full up 3 foot course of ditches, hedges, combinations and tight turns! G unfortunately caught up to the starter before her some way towards the latter part of the course as they had multiple stops so when it came to the water complex Georgie went as wide as possible hoping the ladies horse would pop straight in. Sadly it refused at the jump in to the water and when Georgie came through to jump it was impeeded by this rider! B jumped in and over the brush fence at the last and whizzed through the finish but we were all a bit disheartened at their round being interrupted with a rider experiencing problems.
Having got back to the trailer we washed off and chatted of how B's round had been so awesome any way and how such a good boy he was, as he hadn't done any cross country over the summer (before he did the eventer trial a couple of weeks ago of course) and he's flown round still! He's a real jumping machine that horse!
Later on that night after doing evening stables and getting home Georgie text me to say that she had in fact come second and that the jump judge hadn't indeed marked Georgie clear and that her being impeded hadn't affected her marks! We we re of course over the moon and B has been on flying form and clearly very happy with himself recently.
Also, you know I mentioned about my camera and my awesome pictures I got, it turns out my brain was clearly half asleep from my holiday as I forgot to put my memory card back in my camera, so alas, no pictures! Absolutely gutted and I am a very silly sausage.
However Georgie's GoPro footage came out well (despite being on her hat instead of her normal chest mount) so I edited it; I removed the stop and impediment from the rider in front as I don't want to embarrass anyone) and put it on Youtube -
Hopefully I'll get my saddle back from being fixed next week and Erik and I can start doing some proper jumping and training over the winter!
Sadly the clocks go back this weekend so it's going to be a lot darker in the evenings which means I will be doing a lot more schooling under flood lights and a lot less hacking. Boo, hiss!
This weekend I am dressage writing at Horseheath British Eventing Horse Trials which I have never done me before so wish me luck and if you see me there, say hi and give me a wave!
Sophie x
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