What’s your goal? A friend asked me this earlier this year. I think my answer was something along the lines of keep the body count at zero and don’t get arrested.
The truth was it takes your friends to know you and to know when you have lost your mojo not just your car keys.
She asked me, given I’d done freestyle music for her daughter and a two mutual friends an all had qualified for championships in the UK- did I want to take part as well?
And so it began.
We headed to Chard in June. I’d love to say it was plain sailing but my horse had a passport issued by a UK agency with an Irish chip that neither they nor Horse Sport Ireland could update until the department had to figure it out which thankfully with the help of HSI happened two hours before we departed for the rescheduled ferry trip – talk about cutting it fine!
We arrived in Chard Equestrian where over three days our little group smashed it! Georgia slayed the elementary with placings and a win qualifying with ease.
Barbara and Scout smashed it in the advanced medium to qualify for area festivals! Sammy and I qualified in medium and medium freestyle. Josephine won two yes two Grand Prix with super scores one over 66% too.
So, off we went this week to Little Mill Equestrian for area festivals. On Tuesday we re recorded my freestyle floor plan to ensure timings were up to date. Me being me, having had an awful and emotional day on Monday decided it was one for the fucket bucket and as I didn’t love my music from the first show, I just re did it all.
Josephine didn’t realise I’d done this (she thought I’d just re adjusted the timing of my original music) until we were at the port and did quite rightly ask me who on earth does this the day before the show.
Naturally she was terrified I’d reverted to techno music (she and Lynn and Sean had a “no more techno” intervention with me after Sammy decided to rave away to my music in a show in May much to the judges alarm). I’d instead gone with a mix of tracks from an electric orchestra band I love – Simply Three – using “Counting Stars”, “Riptide” and “Blinding Lights”.
Thankfully after I’d played it – she loved it! I hadn’t ridden to it, but I adore music and to be honest, I just knew it would work so the fact I’d not ridden to it didn’t bother me I’d watched the video with it enough times to know my cues.
This morning, we rode our medium test. Jo was a legend – from plaiting my horse (and me after) to warming me up, I was ready to rock.
Aside from fluffing our simple changes, not a huge shock given I hadn’t him through enough and they are in a place in this test where I’d never pick to put them (imagine the audacity of BD not consulting me on the new tests 😂), I was happy with things. We finished fourth on a respectable score so that was a good start.
In our freestyle, we danced it was so much fun! It wasn’t perfect but we had no mistakes, stayed pretty much bang on our music and you know that feeling where your afraid to think maybe it might have gone ok? I turned to walk out and Barbara and Josephine’s faces told me I might be right!
We sat banging the refresh button on the scores like it was the hot men from Yellowstone – the phone had to be turned over at one stage as myself and Lynn were over excited as I was first score up and in the lead but scores kept coming in and I hadn’t fallen yet!
We got Sammy tacked up for prize giving and realised – we had won! 🥇 there were some happy tears! Sammy was intrigued as to why he was tacked up for a third time, why he was wearing a necklace and why everyone was so excited!
We have apparently qualified for a regional final or championships which is rather exciting! This day nine years ago we were jumping in the RDS! I’d had Sammy a few months and he accidentally qualified at his second ever show! This horse is my unicorn and best friend I’ve achieved more goals on his back than I have on the ground!
Thank you so much Josephine, Barbara, Lynn, Equieire DSE http://dseequestrianoutfitters.ie
Equestrian Reality 