My first outing in August was with Frankie to Burwarton Show for the Open Working Hunter. He was a little star as usual but had a couple of unlucky rails round a course that caused mayhem. There wasn’t one clear round. He went on to score the highest confirmation mark and highest ride mark to finish up in 3rd place only 3 marks off the leader. We would have loved to win as he won the open workers there in 2010, 2011 & 2012 and this was our first time back there since then. But I was still pleased with my big man.

The following day  Mum and I headed down to Swalcliffe for the Animalife BRC Horse Trials National Championships with Percy, Betty, Dolly and of course Queen Wendy the Wagon. Our whole weekend ran so smoothly from start to finish. We shared it with a lovely team of people from Area 20 and with old friends from previous years. Percy was competing in the 100+ Championships and on the Friday he started by trotting up perfectly in the vet inspection and then pulling a lovely dressage test out of the bag for a 29.8 to lie in 2nd place over night in his arena, 6th overall and top in the Best Homebred competition. Along with our Area 20 team of Philli Williams, Abbey Rimmer and Abigail Unwin taking the lead with 4 very good scores between us. That evening we all had great fun at the reception party, wonderful atmosphere and super company. Saturday was the cross country day. Percy was a complete pro, sailing round the roads & tracks, steeple chase and cross country adding no further penalties to his score of 29.8, to move up into 1st place in his arena and 5th overall and holding on to the Best Homebred lead and also the team between them adding very few time penalties to keep hold of top spot in the team competition. On Sunday all 4 horses in our team trotted up well which meant we all went forward to the showjumping. The course was causing trouble all over and there were very few clears. Percy jumped his little socks off just having a really unlucky rail. But this didn’t effect his arena placing so he took top spot. 1st place in his arena at the National Championships. I couldn’t be prouder of him. He finished 7th overall and also took the Best Homebred prize, which I feel is such a fantastic achievement. To have bred a horse and produced him myself to take an award like this means so much to me. Our team finished up having a few rails in the showjumping and this moved us down to 2nd place, but this is still a super result at the National Championships.

Next up was Elfie at Weaver Equestrian for a little dressage outing. He hadn’t been out to a dressage competition for 8 weeks and he was a little star gaining 72.5% for 3rd place in a class of 23. Very proud of him.  And 4 days later he had his first ODE yesterday. I took him to Blazehill Equestrian for class 3 the 2’6″-2’9″. A little out of character for Elfie he was a little spooked my some chairs in his dressage but still got a 70.9%, ie 29.1 to lead after dressage and that was in the Novice 30 test which he’s never attempted before, so lengthening work didn’t really happen and it was quite technical for him but it will come. Then still out of character in the Sj he had 8 faults, jumped all the tricky water trays and planks but seemed spooked when ever I jumped towards the cows in the next door field. But he redeemed himself with a super clear in the time Xc. This left us in 2nd spot, so for his first little ODE at the age of only 4 he was a very good boy.

On 19th August I had an amazing day with my wonderful Percy.  That morning I said to him before we headed off to Somerford Park Horse Trials “please can we have a double clear today” and he gave me just that. Shame I forgot to ask him to give me a good dressage to!!! Unfortunately there were 2 trees at “A” with Pokemon’s sat on the branches. All was fine until they waved at him….”4″ said the judge, twice, and we came away with 35.3. But all was not lost and he gave me a super clear showjumping, just took on all the fences in a super rythem and super careful. Next he stormed round a big and technical cross country, it was almost like he remembered the course from last year and just took me round. The time was very tight with only one going inside all day, but Percy found the bit of thoroughbred in his breeding and put his foot to the floor and got only 4.4, the second quickest in his section, in fact only 2 of us got under 10 time penalties out of 31 in the section. Walking to the score board I was thinking to myself, well surely a double clear will pull him up after his dressge and he felt quite speedy so a top 10 would be nice, maybe 7th….so you can believe my shock when I looked at the score board and saw us lying in 2nd place!!!!  I was stunned and I can’t explain how proud of him I am. What an absolute star. So much love for my homebred baby boy.

Two days later Arrow and I had a lovely day at the Sport Horse Breeding of GB National Championship Show at Staffordshire County Showground. It runs along side SCOPE so it was extremely busy with plenty going on. Arrow has only been to 3 little shows so this was a huge occasion for her, but she was beautifully behaved. So proud of her and coming home with a 2nd rosette was the icing on the cake.

On Wednesday 24th August we had a yard outing to the beach at Ynyslas near Borth. I loaded up Frankie, Florence and Percy, along with Betty and Dolly the dogs, Mum and friends Nikee. We had a wonderful day spent riding up the beach and having a little splash in the sea. It’s a bit of a long drive at 80 miles but its worth it to give the horses a lovely change of scene.

Elfie went out for a little play at Tushingham Arena the following Saturday for showjumping. There were so many people there but he was very well behaved. He jumped a super double clear which was good enough for 5th out of 30 competitors. Clever boy.

My final outing in August was with Percy and  we headed to Llanymynech for the BE Novice. I was really pleased with his dressage, he was much more settled and consistent then he was at Somerford scoring a 31.8. He had a very costly tiny half a jog stride in his free walk where he was given a 5 but other then that everything happened where it was supposed to, I could have just asked a little more pace and bigger stride off him for the higher marks. Showjumping he was pinging and rather jolly, just had an unlucky 4 faults at an upright where we had a perfect stride but must of breathed on the pole and we jumped .  Then we set off on the cross country, I’ll be honest we didn’t have half the ride that we had at Somerford. We were clear and inside the time but it just wasn’t such a smooth run and we had a horrible jump at fence 10b, the ski jump before the corner. He just dropped his back end on the fence and scrambled over. Poor boy but so genuine to just get himself back together and pop the corner. His 4 faults Sj proved very costly dropping us from 7th to 12th. Love my boy.

All in all August was a good month for us, but I can’t quite believe that we are already at the end of August. Where has the year gone!!