{"id":584,"date":"2008-06-08T20:33:40","date_gmt":"2008-06-08T19:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=584"},"modified":"2012-04-23T20:19:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T19:19:34","slug":"big-vin%e2%80%99s-day-out-llanymynech-horse-trials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=584","title":{"rendered":"Big Vin’s Day Out: Llanymynech Horse Trials"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em><\/p>\n

So there I was, standing around in my field.<\/p>\n

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

And she likes.<\/p>\n

Yeah baby!<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n

Sue arrived with a headcollar, took me out of the field and in to my stable where she gave me breakfast.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

You know how important it is to have layers of scrunk in one’s tail?<\/p>\n

Well she brushed them out!<\/p>\n

Bah!<\/p>\n

Anyway, while all of this was going on my man arrived.<\/p>\n

I love my man, but it’s important not to let him know.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

He fed me a carrot then disappeared off to do things while Sue finished tarting me up.<\/p>\n

When she was finished I looked a real state.<\/p>\n

My mane was all plaited and my lovely scrunky tail was all brushed out and gleaming.<\/p>\n

Big girl’s blouse, I thought to myself.<\/p>\n

Then my man’s woman turned up and said ‘hello’ to me and said how I looked pretty.<\/p>\n

Pretty!<\/p>\n

I ignored her while he petted me.<\/p>\n

My man then spent ages – and I mean absolutely ages – grooming me.<\/p>\n

Every single inch got brushed or wiped; I haven’t had such attention since… Oh… the week before last.<\/p>\n

When he finished he said I looked brilliant.<\/p>\n

I got a bit offended by this.<\/p>\n

I think – being a handsome thoroughbred chap and all that – I look brilliant all of the time!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Oh!<\/p>\n

We were going somewhere!<\/p>\n

That explained all of the tarting about with plaits and why I had breakfast in the stable not in the field.<\/p>\n

So I did what I’m supposed to do when I hear the lorry.<\/p>\n

I opened my bowels.<\/p>\n

Repeatedly.<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

We were going somewhere with no grass!<\/p>\n

I opened my bowels again.<\/p>\n

Twice.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The trip to wherever we were going was a long, long one.<\/p>\n

I can tell because the views out of my windows changed so much.<\/p>\n

I ate quite a bit on the way.<\/p>\n

I don’t actually like eating while I’m travelling; I only do it because I can.<\/p>\n

If you know what I mean?<\/p>\n

When my man lowered the lorry ramp I had a good look about.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I could also see little spaces marked out with white boards in the grass.<\/p>\n

Ohhhhh!<\/p>\n

The penny dropped.<\/p>\n

My man uses this phrase quite often when he’s just realised something obvious.<\/p>\n

We were at a dressage competition!<\/p>\n

A bit boring!<\/p>\n

But still, it was a lovely day and the grass looked very green.<\/p>\n

And I was feeling very relaxed.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

When they came back he got dressed in his dressage outfit, then got me out of the lorry.<\/p>\n

Then he groomed me – again – and got the dressage saddle out.<\/p>\n

When he’d finished with all of the boring stuff we rode over to the dressage working-in area.<\/p>\n

We worked in and then we wandered over to the competition arena.<\/p>\n

But something happened.<\/p>\n

After the first couple of movements – you know:<\/p>\n

Enter at A working trot and be boring, boring, boring.<\/p>\n

Things got the better of me.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what happened; I just didn’t want to do boring old dressage.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So I sort of flipped out, a bit.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But I really wanted to go fast and be quick and clever and galloping and jumping and running.<\/p>\n

After the dressage he took the saddle off and groomed me again.<\/p>\n

I like being groomed.<\/p>\n

And then he got out the jumping saddle and a white numnah.<\/p>\n

Woo hoo!<\/p>\n

I could feel my ears prick up.<\/p>\n

Jumping!<\/p>\n

Yes!<\/p>\n

After ages, when he was finally ready, my man got on and we went to find something to jump.<\/p>\n

Show jumps!<\/p>\n

We warmed up over a couple, jumped them twice each, then went in to the show jumping arena.<\/p>\n

And…<\/p>\n

Although I was keen and ready to go forward, my man wanted me to go forward slower than I wanted to go forward.<\/p>\n

How stupid is he?<\/p>\n

After the third fence I began to think he was right.<\/p>\n

The fences were bigger than I’d ever seen before, but that was no real issue.<\/p>\n

But the ground was very, very slippery.<\/p>\n

I skidded around some of the corners.<\/p>\n

When we finished, we rode out but I could feel that my man wasn’t terribly happy.<\/p>\n

I don’t know why not.<\/p>\n

We got round, didn’t we?<\/p>\n

Well yes, we had hit a lot of fences over but it was slippery in there.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

We got back to the lorry, he took the saddle off and groomed me again.<\/p>\n

Then he got out my green numnah.<\/p>\n

Green numnah!<\/p>\n

Cross country?<\/p>\n

He tacked me up then got changed in to his cross country colours.<\/p>\n

Then he fiddled about with my hind feet with some kind of spanner and something he called ‘studs’.<\/p>\n

When he was finished we went to find the cross country fences.<\/p>\n

There were three practice fences but we only jumped one – three times.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

He held me back a bit on the first half of the cross country course.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We finished at a flying pace.<\/p>\n

It was brilliant!<\/p>\n

I felt great.<\/p>\n

My man dismounted then hugged and patted me and told everyone who was anywhere near how wonderful I am.<\/p>\n

As if they needed telling!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Then he gave me another net of haylage and some carrots and some water and checked me over, then he went to get changed.<\/p>\n

End of Vin’s bit…<\/p>\n

For Vin’s first one day event it was a day of highs and lows.<\/p>\n

Our dressage mark was scandalously poor – I’m not complaining about the marking, we were very fairly judged.<\/p>\n

But I’m disappointed that – on the day – Vin and I underperformed.<\/p>\n

We’re used to scoring dressage in the 70% zone.<\/p>\n

To underperform so badly that we incurred (a correctly marked) score of 50 is a massive disappointment to me.<\/p>\n

Our show jumping was, frankly, dire.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

The cross country was brilliant.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

If a horse hits a show jumping fence it falls apart.<\/p>\n

If a horse hits a cross country fence the horse and\/or rider hits the ground.<\/p>\n

We had a stupid refusal out on the course at fence 7a which was probably entirely my fault.<\/p>\n

The previous evening I’d sent Karen a text saying the only fence on the cross country I liked was 7a.<\/p>\n

So I probably switched off; just stopped riding at it.<\/p>\n

Vinnie felt me switch off and he switched off too.<\/p>\n

That was our only incident on the cross country course.<\/p>\n

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

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

I’m keeping very careful watch on him, monitoring him constantly.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It was a brilliant day.<\/p>\n

The weather was fantastic – the organisers are to be congratulated for arranging such a nice day!<\/p>\n

Llanymynech wasn’t a perfect ‘first’ one day event; I’d probably not enter it again as a ‘first’.<\/p>\n

But the cross country was big, bold, well-designed and flowing; it rode like a dream.<\/p>\n

And Vin thoroughly enjoyed himself – that was plainly obvious!<\/p>\n

And the staff – all volunteers – were extraordinarily well organised, cheerful, friendly and informative.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n

B. (and V.)<\/p>\n


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