Sunday, November 9, 2008

Oscar's first outing

Just home from our first dressage day with the Waitemata Riding Club, and Oscar's official first outing. We went to adult ride on Wednesday which was our practice run and he was good there, quite jig joggy to start off with but settled nicely. Much the same today, very tense to start off with so lots of trotting to help him chill out. Almost overdid the warm up as he started to get pooped at the very end of the test. Had half an hour warm up, probably 20 mins next time would be good. But I guess he wasted a lot of nervous energy too!

We just did one test, with no canter as our steering is still not great and in canter it is just a disaster! So it was nice and straightforward for both of us, plus because it's a WRC event you don't have to dress up, hurrah! Some pics, courtesy of team photographer Sarah (who's pony Bert once again disgraced himself by refusing to load, and so missed out on the dressage, silly boy):

All ready to go

Tanking off in our warm up

Meant to be medium walk, lol

Free walk - not his best but at least he walked and didn't jig jog

Nicer trot

Halt (perfectly square, yay!), salute

Well done :-)

Relief....

We ended up with 63% which I was pretty happy with for our first effort. I am hoping when he is heaps more relaxed next time we can get some nicer softness going on. Had good comments on the score sheet, including "shows promise just needs more experience". Too right...

In other news.... Harry and his mum left us yesterday to go back to Alana's place. She's also taken another of the heifers so there are just two of hers left here, which she is going to get home killed. And we're selling the last of our 2yo steers and heifers next weekend so it'll just be the little dudes for a while until we buy more weaners, probably in January.

The hay paddock is all locked up now, just watching it grow. And the pigs are still growing too, with huuuge appetites still. Ben planted some more veges in the garden the other day so we've got more peas, lettuce, plus tomatoes, zucchini, and gherkins. And then just need to plant more peas and tomatoes and also some capsicum and that should do us.

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