Touch Wood

Things seem to have settled down in my equine world, thank goodness. Tai seems to be fully recovered. He had a hacking cough at the end of last week and I thought we were in for another vet visit but I wormed him and he seems to have come right. Spyke seems to have settled completely after being off grass for a week. We had our second registered dressage competition in the weekend and I was quite worried about how he would behave as he has been SO awful when out recently.

I took him to the forest on the day before as I really don't like schooling the day before a dressage competition. I went with Kristina on her LOVELY little 5 year old Oscar and we had a really, really lovely ride. We trotted and cantered and everyone was sane and sensible. I gave Spyke a bath afterwards (in the rain) and then drove him home. In between me dropping him off and going to pick up my car the wee 'treasure' rolled in the muddiest hole he could find so when I plaited him up his mane was full of mud. Grrrr.

On the day of the dressage I was in complete agony. I had fallen off the three foot high brick wall at mum and dad's on the Thursday night (was helping with Christmas decorations) and I landed on my elbow. It turns out that I think I have torn a muscle in my chest and it is VERY painful. Poor Kristina turned up to help me on sunday morning and got sent home for Voltaren (which helped a LOT).

We arrived at the dressage about 30 minutes later than I had planned and, since we were third on, had very little warm up time. Fortunately, Spyke was his normal laid back self at Woodhill so he only needed a bit of trot and canter work before going in to the ring. He did quite a nice test but needed a lot of pushing on and he was very on the forehand (which crops up every time. I need to pay off some vet bills so I can get some lessons). I was thrilled with how cool he was.

We had almost an hour between tests but when we arrived back down by the ring to warm up 25 minutes before our scheduled time the horse two before us had just come out of the ring. Yikes!!!! Poor Spyke trotted and cantered once on each rein and then had to go straight in the ring. Well he was COMPETELY asleep!!! He tripped at E and didn't strike off on one canter when I asked him. Fortunately the judge didn't hear me shout "Bollocks" at the top of my lungs when I got that all wrong. LOL. It was a very laboured test but once again, as he was quiet I was pretty happy. The next dressage I do I will be rarking him up a bit to see if we can get him more forward (it won't be hard to get him more forward than he was that dayLOL). He got good marks, 63.5% for the first test and 61.5% for the second so he has qualified for HOY but I doubt we will be going.

The dogs are very well. Sammie is just full of beans after her operation and was full on playing with Brina up at the paddock last night. I love seeing them so happy. Brina is in dire need of a really good makeover which I will hopefully manage after Christmas. She was decidedly stinky last night when we got back from the paddock so a bath might be required before Christmas day.