Words by Emma Pidgeon

Well, as usual, busy doesn’t really cut it. I have been full steam ahead in my life. At my last blog I announced that Mat are Engaged. It turns out, a really good thing to be doing when you’re trying to get ready for State is to be planning and throwing an Engagement party… You know I don’t like to do things by halves.

While I am working diligently with Arthur to get him prepared to smash our 70% goal this year, and keeping Kate on deck, I am also planning this party (as well as working, and coaching and all the other things I take on ill-advised). The party planning is going quite well, thanks to Margie who has come on board as my cake-maker and self-appointed party planner (YAY)!

On the weekend just gone I went up to Cannonvalley to have a final competition before state. It was a solo trip for Arthur as I was also judging I thought Kate might prove a might too much. Arthur thought the best way to prepare for this event would be to roll in the dam on Friday afternoon. I had no time to wash him that night, so he got a cold bath at 4am Saturday morning for his trouble. I’m sure he was regretting the little swim…

Cannonvalley is a great little club, about 1.5hrs north of my house. They took on the insurmountable task of running official Dressage and Combined training on Saturday, and the same again on Sunday. They had around 52 riders for this event, which I can tell you as an organiser would have given me nightmares! The committee took it head on and everything ran very smoothly. They are to be congratulated on such a great job.

© Fiona Hollingworth

The level of dressage in this area is steadily improving and that was very evident this weekend. There were scores in the mid 60% all the way down to 10th place in Preliminary, which, for a regional area is super impressive. Unfortunately, it meant, that my own performance of 63% and 65% left me out of the placings on Saturday. Sunday however, I scored a 65% to place 6th and a 66% (with one judge even scoring me on 70.2%) to place 1st and a 2nd overall. I was stoked with four very calm, and ridable tests for the weekend and two of the best show jump rounds Arthur has done all year. It’s an exciting time. I checked out the winning percentages from last year’s championships, the good news is, I only need to improve by about 10% in 5 weeks to be in the money, hahaha…

© Fiona Hollingworth

Arthur is looking decidedly scruffy at the moment, we had a short cold snap up here which resulted in fluff from all angles and now we’re back to quite hot days, so it’s time for a clip job to make life a bit easier. That will also help the grumpy old man look a bit more like a real dressage pony! Watch this space for the dressage pony make over.

The whole weekend was sans tail for Arthur. My secret weapon for at least sort of looking like a dressage pony has been the tail. Unfortunately, I had a tidy up at home last week and put both horse’s tails ‘somewhere safe’… Yeah, they’re safe alright, no risk of them being used at all.

Looking forward to some more dressage lessons, the engagement party and then the last ever Pony Club State for this old duckling all in the next month.

As I was writing this blog, the news started to come in about Billie Kinder’s accident. I knew of Billie and Charlie when they were based in Proserpine. Although I did not know the family well they were always beautiful and polite girls. It has been one blow after another for the Equestrian community this year. I just wanted to take this moment to send my condolences and best wishes to all of Billie’s family and friends.

Cheers, 

Emma