Today, Narna has yet again made us the most proud owners! After the trauma of the week she has had, feeling poorly, vet visit and the ensuing TLC, love care and attention by us, our friends and all the team at Penshaw - she seems to be responding and enjoying her new life. Today, we threw in another new experience for her to try... A very basic dressage test. Denise, a really lovely encouraging lady, runs a dressage series, open to clients, liveries and externals, held on the farm Narna is liveried. So, as a very last minute decision, I decided to give it a try and see how our girl went with it. Denise was kind enough to allow us to make an exceptionally late entry - but - with the other events this week, as you can imagine, practising a test was last thing on our minds! This morning, Paige and I discussed our criteria, due to Narnas current ailment and decisions we made were step by step and at any stage she didnt feel comfortable, the event was cancelled. So, after spending a lovely evening with our great friend Chris, a walk this morning with Chris and our dogs, Paige and I set off to gather my dress stuff and headed to see the baby girl. Narna was turned out, no rug on as was a beautiful day, so with headcollar in hand I went to go get our lady. The dressage competition had already started, strange horses on the yard, boxes and trailers were strewn about, so we werent sure how she would react! Step 1 over and passed, she caught as ever as a dream and toddled to her stable as if the boxes/trailers and plaited and dressed ponios were there every day. She went to stable and continued to munch on in her stable nonchalantly! Once groomed, Paige set to with baby wipes to get field stains off. As we were not bothered of how we did in test - was just for experience - we did not bath and plait for this occasion.... Anyway, Paige tacked her up, I changed, all was going good... She hadnt shown signs of stressing, so step 2 and 3 were passed. I got onto Narna, who, although is a little reticent from the mounting block to be mounted, did well and once in the saddle, I just felt so safe on her -STEP 4 - passed with flying colours. As I had pretty much farted around doing nothing for about 2 hours, the poor girl was not warmed up at all before we headed to the arena. I did have to go change top and get jacket and after dismounting, dressing then remounting, Narna felt there was something different going on and she did produce a bit extra saliva (symptom of her tummy ulcer and stress) I promised Paige if she didnt feel right being ridden at any point I would stop and retire from the test. Onwards to the arena we both went with trepidation. We walked around, Narnas reactions went as follows: Strange car in the arena - yyyaaawwwwnnn pah, snothing White pole and letters in arena - easy schmeasy Up in top corner beside A - Ian from Crystal Clear Images was there with a camera - he WAS obviously holding a Narna eating camera, hence we past him in extended/super fast trot for the first 3 circuits. Judge beeped her horn and off Narna went! ☺️ this little baby, who is still in discomfort, worked her socks off to try for me. We were a bit erratic in pace as she feels a little sensitive to aids right now, but, end result WE DID IT!!!!! I think only having Paige and the taking ownership of our other horses has equated with the elation I felt when we had finished - the result was 55% and we were not placed, but that was incidental to the proceedings. I do think that this is not the score we are capable of, but we now have our benchmark! If girlie can continue to improve with her weight, fitness, trust and stress reduction - we will all have fun, in the meantime, she cooled down with her brother (my other horse) Js competition rug on, to keep her warm. So, thank you for getting to the end of our weekend tale, Narna is now chilling in her lovely warm bed tonight and myself and Paige are sitting here pleasantly tired but also soooooo happy with this lovely horse who continues to amaze us with her huge heart and trusting us to look after her. We promise to do this from now on baby girl... Enjoy your sleep, see you tomorrow ☺️☺️☺️
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 18:51:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015