Recently Toffee had her first Eventing start in the CNC80 at Eventing Wairarapa's Spring Horse Trial. It was a big day for our baby horse and she found it all a little overwhelming but we are still very happy with her.
The dressage was quite a tense affair as Toffee tried to come to grips with all the other horses around her, the hockey match being played on the super turf right next to the warm up area and the wind flapping the enormous flags on the cross country jumps that were around the perimeter of the dressage arenas. She had also come into season and I suspect was experiencing a few hormonal 'challenges' as well. Unfortunately with the sensory overload, the tank all but ran dry and the test was her worst to date but it still had her mid field (67.89%) - it could've been a LOT worse and it is just as well it wasn't me who was riding her! Here are a few pics from her warm up. She's really starting to look good and mature/fill out now.
We took her back to the yard, sponged her off and tacked her up for the SJ which followed immediately afterwards. It was a very green round, cornering became optional and you could almost see her wee brain exploding out of her ears but jockey and horse made it home safe and sound and in one piece with only a couple of poles on the ground.
As a result of the dressage and SJ, we elected to listen to her and scratch her from the XC the following day - she showed us that she really needs a little more mileage before we should expect her to complete a full xc course and the Clareville course was pretty challenging. We instead took her along to one of the practice days, over that same course the following weekend and will save her first competitive XC run for another time. In hindsight this was absolutely the right decision as the weather on XC DAY was so bad that the Eventing Wairarapa Committee elected to close the course to the higher level competitors for welfare/safety reasons.
And in other news, Brennan's first Trans Tasman foal has arrived safely at Marglyn Connemara and Sport Horse Stud in Western Australia. Marglyn Valentè Solares is a purebred Connemara pony out of Kohatu Solar Flare (NZ) - Here she is:
