Finn Valley Riding Club
Winter Dressage Qualifier
On Saturday 9th January the Area Intermediate Dressage competition was held by the Halesworth and District Riding Clubs at The Broads Equestrian Centre, Barnby. My sister Isabella and I were on the team along with Natalie Flewitt and Danielle Noble. I was riding my new little horse who is a Lusitano and this was his first team outing. Isabella was on her rather lively mare, Danielle was on her big bay horse and Natalie, who we met for the first time, rode her horse Chester.
It was freezing cold with a fair gale blowing which made the working in arena quite exciting, especially after working out how to get in the arena with the new electrical buttons which you could reach from your horse if it was good enough to get near to the post, or with great difficulty from the ground if you are vertically challenged like my mother!!
Our team did extremely well with three second places and a third. This gave us a final score of 6 which is totally incredible. Any other year we would have completely won the competition, but the hosts of the competition ended up on a score of 3!! A first place in each test apart from the Elementary. Unbelievably incredible!
Happily both Natalie and I have qualified for the Intermediate Championships at Bury Farm and I also managed to qualify for the Medium 63 which I am thrilled about.
Unfortunately, because we were rather late in the day, we didn't see the Juniors in the morning and the Novice team was on the Sunday but all looked to have had a good day. Thankyou to the Club for supporting us at the competition and a big thankyou to Barbara for coming along and keeping us all in order.
Shirley Stagg