I had big plans for us this year and looking back on the summer and at our goals, this really hasn’t been the year I had hoped. I had planned to go to more shows and attempt our first novice dressage and hunter trials/ODE. With the big hiccups we have had this year and with only a few months left, I am afraid that it is unlikely that we will achieve these goals this year.
So what went wrong?
It started in April with me being made redundant and struggling to find permanent work since then. I haven’t had the money or security to justify the lessons we needed, let alone the competition and travel fees.
Next we had a nasty fall at camp, which really put me out of action and meant we couldn’t get as much out of camp as I had hoped. After I started to recover I noticed Scottie’s sore back, which put us back a little bit more. Even 4 months on, my knee still isn’t 100%.
And finally, we had Scottie’s extremely nasty field accident. This put us out of everything and 2 months later we are just starting to get back to work. Realistically we are looking at another month until we are back in proper work, but I still don’t know how long it will take us to get back to where we were. Especially as Scottie injured his weaker hind limb, so I am currently praying that we haven’t lost our right canter lead, which took us years to crack!
Because of all of this, I have very different plans for the rest of the year.
I am already looking at having a go at an intro with EquiMind towards the end of the month as we will be up to 15-20 mins of trotting a day by then and with the trotting we have just started to do, it doesn’t look like we have lost too much in this area. So I can’t see a reason why we wouldn’t be capable of an intro.
I am also hoping to be back at Prelim before the end of the year and ideally be getting out to at least one local unaffiliated dressage show, even if we just do an intro. But this is too hard to say for sure until we are able to start cantering and I know where we are with the whole right canter lead situation.
Finally, I would like to think that we will be able to pop a few small jumps before the new year. Nothing too big or complicated. Just that we haven’t jumped since camp, so I think both our confidence could do with this.
This year has made me realise that you can’t take anything for granted with horses. So next year I will try and make the most of every moment and experience as you never know when you might have a set back!
Last Updated on 05/06/2022
