Show Hunter

I took Spyke up to Woodhill Sands for a training show hunter today. We are entered in the WRC Show Hunter tomorrow at Raider Lodge but figured it wouldn't hurt to have a play today. It helped that the show hunter today didn't start until 1 o'clock so I could still get a sleep in. :-). I went up with Steph from my grazing. We were hoping that it wouldn't be too busy as it can take a looooong time for each round if there are lots of people.

Fortunately, there was hardly anyone there!!!! What it did mean though is that the competition was canned as there weren't enough people to have a judge. It meant that we were able to play over the course. My friend Martina's sister Angela was there and she offered to 'judge' for us so that we would be able to get some feedback (Angela is lovely!!!).

The jumps were put right down to start with as Michelle had a baby off the track that had never jumped before. Spyke was a toad!!!!! He spooked at all the jumps. Fortunately, in show hunter you always get a warm up over the actual jumps so we got all the stops out of Spyke's system before we did a round.

Our first round was at 70cm and Spyke did quite a nice round but thought about stopping at the last jump but then he jumped it so it was a really bad jump. The last jump dropped us donw to about last!!! I did the 70 cm round again and it was much better and Angela said that round would have given us second (wohoo). I was going to stop at that but I decided to push myself and do the 80cm round. I am sooooo glad I did as Spyke did it beautifully!!!!! He just felt lovely, he obviously likes the jumps a bit bigger. He won that round!!!!! :-) We stopped at that point. I am really looking forward to tomorrow.

What I loved most about today is having a horse that I know if someone says "Let's go and......." Spyke is a horse that I can throw on the truck and be pretty certain that we will have a fabulous and safe day. Luff that boy!!!!!!