Ashgrove Bernese: Dogs and Horses, Horses and Dogs

Last weekend (Easter) was the weekend of the Bernese Mountain Dog Garden Party in Midhirst. I drove down on Good Friday which was HIDEOUS!!!! The traffic was APPALLING!!!!I basically stopped the instant I hit the motorway and it was a bit of a crawl after that. Fortunately, I know a back road and it paid dividends. :-) I went down the other side of the Waikato River and was the only car on the road until Huntly. The other side of the river was a car park so it saved me a LOT of time. Once I got to Ngaruawahia I was in a line of 20 - 30 cars all the way to New Plymouth. Normally it would take me 4 1/2 hours to get to New Plymouth but on this occasion it took 6 hours!!!
The Traffic in Awakino Gorge:

The Garden Party was great. We had a walk on the Friday afternoon (which we only just made it to) in King Edward Park in Stratford. Then we had a BBQ dinner at the grounds in Midhirst. Saturday was the challenge day. The girls seemed to enjoy the day and came out of it with loads of ribbons. We also learnt about Rally-O which looks like a great sport for berneseseseses.

Some Pics

Brina doing Rally-O

More pics can be seen here

On the Sunday we did some carting. There were only the 'core' berner club people left for that but I just love getting the girls out in their wagon. We will be doing a display at the Pet Expo in Hamilton at the end of July so we will need to work on the girls' carting fitness.

On Sunday afternoon I caught up with Maree and Andrew who were also in NP for Easter. It was great to catch up and by leaving on Sunday afternoon I had a great drive back to Auckland.

On Easter Monday four of us had a LOVELY ride in the forest, we hacked, jumped, galloped and went through the creek. Spyke was fab and it was a lovely way to spend a day.

This weekend we had Dressage Day 3 of the summer dressage series with the WRC. Spyke was lovely and it was really hot again. We did a novice test this time. I was really, really happy with his trot and walk work but I accidentally jabbed him when I asked him to canter and he gave me some pretty horrible canter. :-( However, he still managed to get a 4th which I was stoked with. We did a prelim test too although he was arguing with me again so I didn't ask him to go into any sort of frame but he still managed a 2=. We also did a prix caprilli test again. Spyke was almost asleep when we started the test and was somewhat surprised by the first jump (the big noddy LOL) so he managed to take a rail....at all of 60cms!!!!! However, that woke him up and he did the rest really nicely. I was pretty confident that we had completely blown our chances with the rail but the little bugger managed to win the prix caprilli again. Luff that horse!!!! I will post a couple of pics of the dressage once I have downloaded them.

Today I caught up with Beryl, Richard and Heather at the Botanic Gardens for a dog walk which was really lovely. Although I did manage to have a sudden altitude adjustment when I was walking down by the creek. Them rocks are really, really slippery and I ended up with a very wet and muddy leg and butt. Gonna pay for that tomorrow methinks!! In the afternoon I checked up on Tina's two youngsters and have a lovely ride on Spyke.

Next weekend though is our Show Hunter debut. I am very, very excited about it!!!! I soooooo hope it goes well!!!!!

Some other pics:
The Mountain