A couple of horse shows ...

have taken place during the last couple of weeks.  Our first was an evening show jumping competition at Sissons Farm which was really well attended.  This is our first jumping show with AJ, and although we had a sneaky feeling he wouldn't get placed (as he's a little too slow), we went along for the fun and the experience.

Katie and AJ did extremely well.  She went in for the clear round jumping first, purely so AJ could get a feel for the jumps that would be used for the actual 2' 3"  class.  He refused the double jump (two jumps close together) (which was to be expected as they had bright yellow wings), but he went over it second time around.  Unfortunately this meant it wasn't a clear round, so Katie didn't get a rosette.

Loads of people went in for the actually jumping class and, big mistake on my part, Katie was first one in the ring.  For this competition they had to go straight into a "jump off" of 5 jumps should they first get a clear round of all the jumps.  They did get the clear round, which was fabulous, but sadly Katie forgot to jump one of the jumps in the jump off which was an immediate elimination.  She hadn't realised her mistake at first, but was devastated when she found out.  AJ's jump off time was pretty slow, so the chances are they wouldn't have placed anyway.  Can only say, "it's one of those things" and hopefully a lesson has been learnt for next time, i.e. we won't put her first in a class and she should take more time to learn the jump off course (she only had about 5 mins warning of this before she went into the ring).  Anyway, it was a good evening all round and we shall hopefully go again very soon.

Tacking up

Her second show, last Sunday, was at Sheepgate.  This time she and AJ entered the 2' Working Hunter class.  For this they needed to do a small course of jumps followed by a small show of walk, trot and canter in front of the judges.  There were 7 in her class and she was over-the-moon to be placed 3rd.  She looked stunning too in her new hacking jacket - bit of a story behind that, but I won't bore you with the details!!  A professional photographer was on-hand to take photos for this event, and there's some lovely ones on his website showing Katie and AJ doing their stuff.

In the warm up ring