June 2009
Fundraising Day - 20th June
On Saturday 20th June we held a fund raising coffee morning at our house. There were various stalls and homemade cakes, and numerous cups of tea and coffee were drunk.
I did two displays on Indi and one on Trev. We were especially pleased with Trevor who didn’t put a foot wrong. The ‘audience’ were encouraged to clap, to get him used to the atmosphere of a large competition and he actually seemed to really enjoy the attention!
Trevor struts his stuff!
Amazingly we raised over £400 to put towards my training costs and upkeep of the horses. Thanks to everyone who supported the event and helped with the fundraising.
Hickstead Premier League and GB Para Selection Trials – 24 – 25th June
I was pleased to get invited to Hickstead in June to ride at the GB Final Para Selection Trials. Obviously I wasn’t in the running for selection as I ride for Ireland but it was good to be incited and quite an experience. All the paras had to warm up in the same arena as the top able-bodied riders and at times it was quite intimidating, but it was a good test for those aiming for selection onto the GB team, for the Europeans.
On the first day Indi seemed a bit tense and was backing off from the double bridle – he didn’t do a brilliant test, but the German judge was particularly harsh and we ended up 6th. On the second day he warmed up well and did a much better test for 5th place, but soon after we got home we started looking at changing Indi’s bits.
At the moment we are trying him in some much finer double bridle bits and also considering going back to the snaffle, although I find it much harder to keep him round all the time without the double.
We’ve got some work to do before Hartpury in July!