Big Vin’s Day Out: Llanymynech Horse Trials

There are so many ways I could have written this, but – as with most things – I thought it would be interesting to turn it on its head and not write an event report-style piece

So there I was, standing around in my field.

Eyeing up Charlie over in her field and giving Holly the occasional ‘I am’ that girly horses who are in season like.

And she likes.

Yeah baby!

Anyway.

Sue arrived with a headcollar, took me out of the field and in to my stable where she gave me breakfast.

While I was eating she tied some kind of knots in my mane and brushed out all of the layers of scrunk that I’ve been painstakingly building up in my tail.

You know how important it is to have layers of scrunk in one’s tail?

Well she brushed them out!

Bah!

Anyway, while all of this was going on my man arrived.

I love my man, but it’s important not to let him know.

He chatted to Sue – I heard them say something about Five AM but – I’m only a horse, what do I care about human times?

He fed me a carrot then disappeared off to do things while Sue finished tarting me up.

When she was finished I looked a real state.

My mane was all plaited and my lovely scrunky tail was all brushed out and gleaming.

Big girl’s blouse, I thought to myself.

Then my man’s woman turned up and said ‘hello’ to me and said how I looked pretty.

Pretty!

I ignored her while he petted me.

My man then spent ages – and I mean absolutely ages – grooming me.

Every single inch got brushed or wiped; I haven’t had such attention since… Oh… the week before last.

When he finished he said I looked brilliant.

I got a bit offended by this.

I think – being a handsome thoroughbred chap and all that – I look brilliant all of the time!

Then he went off and I heard the lorry (my man calls it ‘Vin’s Taxi’) start up and pull out of its parking bay.

Oh!

We were going somewhere!

That explained all of the tarting about with plaits and why I had breakfast in the stable not in the field.

So I did what I’m supposed to do when I hear the lorry.

I opened my bowels.

Repeatedly.

My man came and got me and we walked in to the lorry where he gave me a huge net of haylage; this could mean only one thing…

We were going somewhere with no grass!

I opened my bowels again.

Twice.

He gave me lots of carrots and patted me and told me how wonderful I am but I know all this so I don’t really listen to him, but it’s good to be told.

The trip to wherever we were going was a long, long one.

I can tell because the views out of my windows changed so much.

I ate quite a bit on the way.

I don’t actually like eating while I’m travelling; I only do it because I can.

If you know what I mean?

When my man lowered the lorry ramp I had a good look about.

I could see a lot of other lorries over there, but over in the other there I could see a bigish herd of horses all looking as tarted up as I was, being ridden by their humans who were all dressed up too.

I could also see little spaces marked out with white boards in the grass.

Ohhhhh!

The penny dropped.

My man uses this phrase quite often when he’s just realised something obvious.

We were at a dressage competition!

A bit boring!

But still, it was a lovely day and the grass looked very green.

And I was feeling very relaxed.

My man and his woman left me to look at the view while they went off to ‘take care of the paperwork’, whatever that means.

When they came back he got dressed in his dressage outfit, then got me out of the lorry.

Then he groomed me – again – and got the dressage saddle out.

When he’d finished with all of the boring stuff we rode over to the dressage working-in area.

We worked in and then we wandered over to the competition arena.

But something happened.

After the first couple of movements – you know:

Enter at A working trot and be boring, boring, boring.

Things got the better of me.

I don’t know what happened; I just didn’t want to do boring old dressage.

I wanted to run and jump and go fast and be quick and clever and trotting around in boring poncey circles (no matter how good I looked – and let’s face it, I really do look good) had not much interest for me.

So I sort of flipped out, a bit.

I did most of what my man asked me to do – and I did most of what he asked me to do when he asked me to do it.

But I really wanted to go fast and be quick and clever and galloping and jumping and running.

After the dressage he took the saddle off and groomed me again.

I like being groomed.

And then he got out the jumping saddle and a white numnah.

Woo hoo!

I could feel my ears prick up.

Jumping!

Yes!

After ages, when he was finally ready, my man got on and we went to find something to jump.

Show jumps!

We warmed up over a couple, jumped them twice each, then went in to the show jumping arena.

And…

Although I was keen and ready to go forward, my man wanted me to go forward slower than I wanted to go forward.

How stupid is he?

After the third fence I began to think he was right.

The fences were bigger than I’d ever seen before, but that was no real issue.

But the ground was very, very slippery.

I skidded around some of the corners.

When we finished, we rode out but I could feel that my man wasn’t terribly happy.

I don’t know why not.

We got round, didn’t we?

Well yes, we had hit a lot of fences over but it was slippery in there.

And yes, I suppose I might have been a little to blame for not going at his speed, for insisting we go at my pace, but I am, after all, an ex-racehorse!

We got back to the lorry, he took the saddle off and groomed me again.

Then he got out my green numnah.

Green numnah!

Cross country?

He tacked me up then got changed in to his cross country colours.

Then he fiddled about with my hind feet with some kind of spanner and something he called ‘studs’.

When he was finished we went to find the cross country fences.

There were three practice fences but we only jumped one – three times.

Then we wandered over to a man with a stopwatch and a hat who did something he called ‘count-down’ and when he said ‘go’ we cantered out of the start box towards the first fence.

They were big, but because of the ‘studs’ thing my man had done to my hind feet I didn’t slip at all.

He held me back a bit on the first half of the cross country course.

But on the second half of the course, after a fence he called ‘a bloody technical corner’, he let me go at something closer to my own pace.

We finished at a flying pace.

It was brilliant!

I felt great.

My man dismounted then hugged and patted me and told everyone who was anywhere near how wonderful I am.

As if they needed telling!

We walked back to the lorry where he untacked, removed my boots, took the ‘studs’ out of my hind feet and groomed and groomed and groomed.

Then he gave me another net of haylage and some carrots and some water and checked me over, then he went to get changed.

End of Vin’s bit…

For Vin’s first one day event it was a day of highs and lows.

Our dressage mark was scandalously poor – I’m not complaining about the marking, we were very fairly judged.

But I’m disappointed that – on the day – Vin and I underperformed.

We’re used to scoring dressage in the 70% zone.

To underperform so badly that we incurred (a correctly marked) score of 50 is a massive disappointment to me.

Our show jumping was, frankly, dire.

All of the training we’ve undertaken in the last 8 months has boosted our competence to a standard far higher than we exhibited on Saturday.

But at least we didn’t incur any time penalties (no great surprise there – not at the pace Vin bombed round!).

Maybe things would have been different if I’d studded up for the show jumping, but that wouldn’t have altered Vin’s temporary racehorse regression.

The cross country was brilliant.

Yes I held him back for the first half of the course, but after the disaster of our show jumping, I needed Vin to be steady.

If a horse hits a show jumping fence it falls apart.

If a horse hits a cross country fence the horse and/or rider hits the ground.

We had a stupid refusal out on the course at fence 7a which was probably entirely my fault.

The previous evening I’d sent Karen a text saying the only fence on the cross country I liked was 7a.

So I probably switched off; just stopped riding at it.

Vinnie felt me switch off and he switched off too.

That was our only incident on the cross country course.

After Vin had dried off during yet another grooming, I noticed he’d picked up a very tiny nick on a knee.

I think that was at fence 7b – not sure he had quite enough steam to jump both parts of fence 7 after re-presenting.

I’m keeping very careful watch on him, monitoring him constantly.

The injury looks just like a tiny nick, a small amount of hair lost, no blood; but I’ll continue being careful for the next week.

It was a brilliant day.

The weather was fantastic – the organisers are to be congratulated for arranging such a nice day!

Llanymynech wasn’t a perfect ‘first’ one day event; I’d probably not enter it again as a ‘first’.

But the cross country was big, bold, well-designed and flowing; it rode like a dream.

And Vin thoroughly enjoyed himself – that was plainly obvious!

And the staff – all volunteers – were extraordinarily well organised, cheerful, friendly and informative.

Thank you.

B. (and V.)