It was a fairly long journey to get to Verden, roughly 16 hours door to door and ten days with all of us being away from home. Farouche was impeccably behaved for the duration of the show. It was a bit challenging when it came to the working in and to find the arena packed with young horses, mostly stallions, all being put through their paces but still all good experience and generally, she took it all in her stride. I took Two Sox for the Grand Prix which unfortunately clashed with Farouche and her Finale test! Nevertheless he did a good job to finish 10th out of a strong field.
We have the National Champs this week which we leave for in a couple of days, we have 9 horses competing in total so will be fairly busy, the only class we are not contesting is the Advanced Medium which is a first for a while, it is usually our favourite with Michael having won it twice, once with Woodlander Dornroeschen and once with Janeiro, I also won it back in 2004 with Topscore! The training has been going well, I will be taking Two Sox for the Grand Prix (Mike Marakov) and Woodlander Rockstar for the Small Tour Classes (Mike Woodlander Dornroeschen, Torino & Half Moon Delphi.) I also have Woodlander Wavavoom for the International Shearwater 5yr Final, Mike will be taking Woodlander Farouche. He also has Half Moon Dynasty in the Medium Open! Two Sox is feeling well, he will be 18 next year so think that this will be his Finale, he has done me so well and I want him to finish on a high and enjoy his retirement. It will be Rockstar who takes over, he is nicely established at Small Tour now and we will use this Winter to crack on with the Grand Prix work!
Once home again we only had a few days to get things in place for the Regionals.The girls at home had done a great job with keeping things ticking, and with the horses having been well in work before we left, they felt nicely refreshed. Mike rode Half Moon Dynasty and I rode Worldwide in the Medium Open. They are both still fairly green in competition and Dynasty went really well to finish 3rd, where as Worldwide struggled a little bit with his nerves. I also rode Camilla Anderson's U Rockstar in the PSG who I was really pleased with as I had only had the few days to prepare. He finished 4th with 67% which unfortunately just fell short for qualifying for the Championships.
Things should be a little quieter after the Nationals, I have a Paragliding day lined up to follow the original day taster I did after the Regionals- I thoroughly enjoyed it so am going back for more! We also have my Gran's birthday in Germany which we will take a quick time out for. The main concentration after the Nationals will be to bring the horses on over the Winter ready for next year.
