Horse of the Year 2013

Horse of the year had an incredibly disappointing start for us but it ended on the highest of highs - Life is all about balance after all.

The night before we were set to leave for HOY to show Brennan in the Stallion Showcase and help Kim campaign TF MacKenzie in the Clydesdale classes, Brennan had a paddock accident. No idea what caused it but he managed to hurt himself badly enough to make the decision not to take him an easy one. The good news is that he will be fine, in fact as I am writing this, he is in his paddock completely sound again. That's horses!

Saturday was Clydesdale classes day and I was up bright and early and down at the showgrounds getting Kenzie ready to compete alongside others of her breed. She had had a good dressage week with respectable scores in the large classes that saw her in the top half of the field. Pretty impressive for a cart horse really. She also had a starring spot on the Campbell Live show on TV where she took the reporter for a bit of a spin - fun! Unfortunately, for some reason, she was deemed an unsuitable mount for Mark Todd in the Speed Class - we cannot understand why and we think Mark should definitely consider riding her next year if he comes back, in the Friday Night Spectacular. We reckon the crowd would LOVE that!

Kenzie had three in hand classes and two ridden classes. It was a very hot day and everyone was feeling it - the flies in particular were loving it and Kenzie was not so much loving the flies. All this made for quite a tense build up with a very unsettled Kenzie bear and a rather hot and flustered Lou. But, she was a very good girl for her led classes and, apart from the fairly spectacular acrobatics in the trot up section of the last in hand class (where she still placed 4th) and some issues with re-wrapping her tail when it came out, everything went well.

The highlight of the day were the ridden classes and these were indeed why she came. We are so proud to now be able to say that we bred the 2013 Ridden Clydesdale of the Year. What an achievement it is for us and, in a year where things have not gone so much to plan, a great way to end the season.

Enough of my waffle - lets allow the pictures to do the talking ...

CONGRATULATIONS KIM AND KENZIE!