Lady's first Intermediate

Lady went to Wilton at the end of July to contest her first intermediate. She was a really good girl and I was thrilled with her, but the result doesn't really show that!

She did a good dressage scoring 8's for both centre lines and ended on 34.6. I was so pleased with her as we have been working on getting under 35 in novices! I feel we are really having a break through with the dressage at the moment. She still however, lacks a bit of balance and self carriage which is preventing her from scoring the really top marks, but we are working hard on it!

Show-jumping...well we had 5 down! Whoops! But actually I was so pleased with the way she went and the way I rode. I have been riding a bit backwards recently, just from being really nervous, but on Saturday I got into forwards mode...a bit too forwards though!! Lady just got a little bit fast and clumsy, however the round was really fluent so next time I just need to get the balance whilst being forwards, just not too fast!

Cross country... well we had a ball! Lady was fab! The course was causing a lot of problems and fence 13 was the biggest drop I have ever seen! The step in itself was fine, it was the fact that it was on a very very steep hill, it reminded me of the leaf pit at Burghley!! The picture does not do it justice! As you can imagine I was very nervous coming into this fence, so busy concentrating on leaning back I forgot to kick so we had a tiny step back which gave us 20 penalties but she flew the rest filling me with loads of confidence after it has been knocked by all Tinker's issues!

Despite ending on quite a cricket score I was buzzing because that's the first time I have completed an intermediate on another horse apart from Tinker, which I feel is a big achievement. Also before the competition you still wonder whether your horse has it in them to move up a level but Lady performed so well all day...the rider just needs to perform as well as her and then we will be very competitive!! We are off to Aston next for another crack at intermediate...I'm much more confident now so I'm very excited this time, rather than a bundle of nerves!!