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June has been a very busy but exciting month! Evita and I have been to lots of competitions, displaying our newfound confidence which has resulted in some very positive scored.
On 6th June we went to Sparsholt BD to compete in the elementary 55. After what felt like a fairly average test (and a very tired horse in the heat!) I was very excited to have come away with 67.742% to come 8th overall and 5th in my section. I had said to myself that if I got over 3 points in this test, I would push really hard over the next few weeks to try and get enough points to qualify for area festivals. We came away with 5 points, so it will be a busy few weeks as we only have until 30th June to qualify.
On 11th June I completed my last day in education having been at my school since I was 12. I am now 18, and as strange and emotional as it was, I really feel like a new chapter has opened and I can move forwards with my life in a really positive way.
Despite a small wobble, where it really hit me that I won’t have the structure of education behind me now, as I mentioned in my last blog I am someone who thrives off structure and stability but instead of letting the feeling get on top of me I was solution focussed (thank you Jackie McCormick!!) and wrote down my own plan that ‘is loose enough to live in’ which has completely calmed me down and renewed the excitement rather than the nerves behind opening new doors and opportunities. I have even got myself a few jobs!
Evita went for a lesson with Pammy Hutton (my Christmas present!) which was just incredible. We had a play with the half steps, our flying changes – where she had us doing them on a 20m circle! And our half pass, which is a movement I find particularly difficult, especially on such a big horse but I can away feeling so proud where I had a real epiphany on how to influence Evita’s way of going and I cannot wait to use my new found knowledge in the competition arena.
Missy moo is just plodding along at the moment, she’s starting to figure out little ways of getting out of work and her sassy side if starting to show but it is all a learning curve for both Missy and I, so lots of hacking and days out in the field for her. I am just taking things slowly to give her time to mature, lots of baby steps. I never realised I would get so excited over the fact that she doesn’t have to be lunged before I get on and that we can get a forward trot. She’s hopefully also going to get given a little taste of cross country over the summer! And fingers crossed that it won’t be too long before we can have ago at an arena hire to start getting her confidence up when she’s not at home.
Evita also sadly sustained a bit of an injury following a freak accident in the field which resulted in a few weeks off games. However, this meant that we were unable to go to the three competitions that I had booked to gain our area and regional qualifications which was gutting to say the least. But you can imagine the excitement when I got the email to say that Evita and I had actually qualified for the elementary silver areas due to the shortened season meaning less points are needed for qualification, so on 29th August we will head off to Sparsholt and compete in our first areas together. I couldn’t be more excited!
In other news, Evita is now starting to be brought back into work, lots of stretchy work for a few weeks. She has her first canter in two weeks the other day where she was absolutely foot perfect until she caught onto another horse having a slight meltdown at the walker and she decided it was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen and we had a bit of a broncy moment, but I am really proud of myself as I dealt with it calmly and reassured her that everything was ok and she calmed down and was happy Evita again.