Perfect ending to a perfect weekend

Day two of our dressage clinics and Herman and Geoffrey were on form!

How do you cure sitting trot issues? Why remove the stirrups of course!

New travelling partners

Who would have thought it? Herman and Geoffrey went out for the day and had a lovely time.

Refreshments anyone?

Fancy ribbons all round

Big smiles tonight at Saddle Club jumping - between the three of us we managed to place in each class!

The Andalusian and the Llama

Geoffrey and Lindo paid a long overdue visit to Berkshire Riding Centre for more dressage clinics. For Lindo this means taking his lovely paces to the next level. For Geoffrey this means loads of fuss from his favourite person in the whole world, Martin Kattenbusch, and a polite invitation to relax and get his head out of llama position.

Pony portraits!

Some very good friends kindly bought us vouchers to get portraits drawn of our boys. The end results are really amazing! Sandra, the artist, has captured them perfectly. Good idea for birthdays and Christmas pressies. ;-)


http://www.finepetportraits.co.uk/WelshCob2.html
http://www.finepetportraits.co.uk/HolsteinerHorse.html

Jumping our socks off!

Well the Chappell-Simms family have been busy. There's been the livery ODE (3rd and 4th place), saddle club show jumping (that'll be a 2nd place for moi), unaffiliated show jumping summer series (4th and 5th for Claudie including qualifying for the Swallowfield Show).

And here's a video of our progress... Important note to self: if all else fails, LEG, LEG and MORE LEG!

Dressage to music

Saddle Club dressage took a slightly different turn last night with a few of us having a go at Novice Freestyle to Music (apart from Miss Diane who showed us how to do a fab Advanced Medium test). Geoffrey pranced around to the music quite nicely and earnt us a very respectable (and unexpected) 2nd place. But the best is to come...(watch this space).

Lindo and Geoffrey make the grade!

Well all that practice paid off for the Pairs Dressage last night - we gained a very respectable 3rd place! It was a fantastic evening - there was glitter, piaffe, half pass and halt to canter in some tests. But spirits were high and everyone had fun. I can't remember all the placings, so I'll let Jane do that in her official capacity as Saddle Club Chair (ooh and there's more video of Jane and Brian to follow).

From llama to pony...

Here's a short clip of Geoffrey's sessions with Martin Kattenbusch. (Lindo and Fella to follow very soon.)

Fancy ribbons all round!

WSC dressage tonight and not one but two fancy ribbons for Wellie liveries!!

I can be found grinning from ear to ear with a 2nd place rosette, but Lucinda is grinning even more with a 1st place! Woohoo!

Well done Lindo and Geoffrey - you are superstars!

Show jumping report

Sadly it was Wendy's last event as WSC co-ordinator so we all had to be on our best behaviour and do a good job! It was a traditional Wendy course with some tricky fences and tight turns in the jump off. The wall caught a few people out and a couple of the turns had to be on a penny!

Geoffrey and I gave it our best shot - we had one down and although we didn't try some of the tight turns we had a great time! But Brian and Claudius showed us how it's really done and came home with a 3rd place!

Well done Brian and Claudius! (Please Mrs Chairperson, can we bump them up to the next league?)

Fame at last!

Grab a copy of this month's Horse magazine, turn to page 18 and read the letter of the month! (Shame my stirrups weren't level.)

Park Farm pictures

Pictures from Geoffrey and Maggie's day out.

Stressed out ponies...

She's making me do dressage AGAIN, but it's okay, I've learnt the Amazing New Dressage Test...

Mum, did you learn the test?

Geoffrey and Maggie's dressage report

We all headed off to Park Farm Show last weekend and had a great day. Geoffrey decided to add his own style to his dressage tests and finished it off really nicely cantering down the centre line to salute the judge (it should have been medium walk - ahem). No fancy ribbons for us but lots of important lessons learned, like don't hold your breath during the test, purple really isn't my colour.

Maggie Mae did a great dressage test narrowly missing out on a 6th place fancy ribbon. There was much jumping involved and a showing class to finish off the day. Important lesson learned here - showing is boring, don't try it kids.

WSC combined training report

The dressage was good apart from forgetting what came next after tracking left at C. We were more relaxed than normal and got a score of 34.21.

We were caught on camera smiling whilst jumping (well it was the last jump).

Here's a close up for proof!

I think we got 7 out of 10 for the jumping. So all in all, a successful evening. The Wellie livery crew were on form - Pip and Fox took home second place in the open league; Nadia and Maggie and Charlotte and Paddy all had good rounds too.

Here's some shots from our recent lessons. You see we can do it rather well when the adrenalin and nerves aren't pumping!

The show must go on!

Sadly we had to withdraw from our dressage competition this weekend but in true blitz spirit we ran our own version at Wellie with Geoffrey, Lindo and Maggie Mae all taking part, so our hard work and practice didn't go to waste!

Thanks to everyone for making it a special day for us: Caroline (judge), Jane (writer), Ben (steward), Brian (camerman), Schoie (trainer), Sue and Caroline (audience, stewards) and Steve for supplying the Pims afterwards!

Pictures and video of the highlights to follow...

Pony party video!

It's been a week-long wait but I hope you think it's worth it!

CLICK HERE for video!

CLICK HERE for the pony water party video!

Oh my, what a handsome chap

Brian's away for a couple of days so I'm in charge of pony faffing! Yay!



And my treat this weekend is riding Claudius - a few twists in the stirrup leathers will be required.

If you squint and put your nose against the screen you'll just about make out Tommie Tom and Legs having pony love in the field.















And squint a bit more to see Hugo munching away oblivious to my happy snapping!













But just for his Mum here's a better one taken the other day.

The weekend!

Sadly the weekend's been and gone. It started with Brian and Claude's lesson and ended quite rightly with a beer at the pub!

In between there was lots of shopping (yes it took 4 attempts to find the right sized fly sheet for Geoff) and pony faffing.

Claude and Geoff spent an hour in the field munching together with Claude squeeling and bucking to try and kick start some hooning. Naturally it didn't get the reaction he wanted from Geoff, who couldn't lift his head from eating position.

The yard has been transformed - if any of the horses had stood still for long enough they might have been painted - the hospitality tent and stands are in place and competitors for Premier League are rolling up.

Newest member Theo looks very settled in his new spot and Hugo is still in charge of the field!

What are you doing down there Mum?

This is turning into a blog all about Geoffrey...

Having mastered the art of hurtling over jumps I thought we'd try our hand at the more technical aspects. Today we were trying to change canter lead over a jump.

All that remains to say is...we had to fill out an accident form...

More video of us.

In other news, I hear Lindo and Helen are doing great things, and brought home rossettes from this weekend's show jumping. Team Hogan braved the bad weather to take part in a cross country clinic and there were smiles all round. Brian and Claude had a great lesson yesterday, prefering walk to canter than trot to canter (something about the wrong underwear I think).

This week starts with affiliated dressage. Good luck Diane and Tommie Tom! And we're going to show the WSC crowd just what we can do as the week closes with WSC show jumping.