16 February 2025
Around this time last year Fred did dressage and came home with a double win - he had won both Novice classes. It was a bit of a one off for me and so I celebrated this unusual event on Facebook....
This year's double double was for the BRC Area SJ at Badgworth.
Not having been up to much recently, I entered the team 70/75cm class and the 80/85cm class.
The 70/75cm class was designed as a 'warm up' class. I wasn't really expecting much, perhaps a pole or something..
However on the Monday before the Show Jumping, we discovered Freddie's saddle tree was sitting at different angles from the 'head' whilst the left side sat quite steeply at say a 30 degree angle from the centre, the right side was at 45, with the saddle whisked off to be corrected, I was very kindly lent an alternative - a beautiful GFS demo saddle, so very kindly lent to me. I tried it on the Weds on a fairly sparkly Fred, for the 15 mins I was in the saddle, I was aware that it was a little bit big for me, but mostly I was trying to wrestle a spooky pony.
When I tried again on the Thursday, I almost cried when I realised that I wasn't able to get my short stumpy legs beyond the saddle flaps and down to Fred's sides and was rocking and rolling in the saddle. Feeling like the most spoilt brat in the world, but unable to communicate with Fred, or balance, I asked Jane to try her old jumping saddle.
This one felt much more like my saddle. My legs could reach around and I was able to balance, but we realised the saddle was sitting a little low on Fred's withers. Jane really kindly helped me pop a couple of fences and we agreed that he would manage the 70/75 class but not the bigger class as he couldn't get his shoulders or back 'up' to bascule.
I had another pop with Jayne on Friday, she agreed that 70 would be ok, but 80 would be a bit punishing, and she came up with the idea of popping the sheepskin half pad under.
And so at 8.30am on Sunday, Jayne arrived with a range of saddle pads to see what we could 'fix'. With the sheepskin tucked under Jane's butterfly, we managed to get a little more clearance for his shoulders. We had a quick warm up before anyone else got started so that we could
a) check the saddle combo was working and
b) to make sure that I didn’t squash anyone in the warm up – always a fun time for Fred
I then put him back in his stable with his tack on for 30mins whilst the first few people warmed up and jumped their rounds, then I quickly popped on again and warmed up again in the back arena (away from everyone) and headed down to the main indoor arena........
Freddie loooooves jumping. It’s so much more fun than dressage!
The Area competition is both a team and individual competition. We were first to go in our class and for our team.
The 12 fenced course included a double and a stile. Jane made us a nice BS type course and Freddie actually behaved, probably because the jumps came up quick and he had to focus. Or maybe because this was his third jump in 4 days.
We 'tapped' each of the double but miraculously they stayed up, meaning we were the first clear of the class. After everyone had jumped, not only were we in the winning team, but had won as an individual too. So Fred got to lead the lap of honour. 😊 I’m so so pleased with him. He had a lot of fun.
Bigger fences next time and hopefully we'll get jumping more and get smoother again😊
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