August has flown by!!! The plus side to this is spring is getting closer! Yay, longer days and warmer weather 😉
I’ve spent most of August all over the countryside. I’ve just arrived home from Invercargill, it’s always cool (literally) to go down there and see everyone and catch up on how they have progressed, so be it a little chilly and wet for me!
I was teaching down in Christchurch in the middle of the month, where they are all in full swing eventing, which is pretty awesome to follow their results. Lindsay Colwell winning the Open at Oamaru and Aisling Rayne with Black Onyx winning the Pre Novice there too. Milly Robinson came 5th in the Pre Training class and everyone else either having a good run or we have a few more things to work on next time I’m down! 😉
The great thing about the South Island is now they are all starting to go to the same events and they are getting to meet each other and help each other!
Towards the end of the month I was teaching at Holly Morrell’s Woodlands Equestrian Clinic at Taupo. Holly is doing an awesome job organising things for the Taupo area, for people to do most weekends, little shows and clinics for them all down there.
As we were going to Taupo teaching we thought we would take our babies down there as well, so we loaded up 8 babies and 1 experienced one, all I’ll say is the loading procedure took 1 and a half hours, and it wasn’t any of the 8 babies that caused the biggest “freshness” problem! Have a guess who was the “naughty” child…?
Overall the babies were really cute, I’m not sure who won the favourite award, but I think Rocky was the biggest improver…. I actually got my leg over him on the 2nd day. Bart stayed the most athletic in good and bad ways, Spanner dominated and confirmed her Alpha Mare name plate… Gucci won the cutest facials in the barns.. Lewie won the sweetest award again.. Cluny won the funkiest new Stubben bridle award thanks to my sponsors Spurs of Counties… Rat won the cruisiest and bravest young horse, he just stood dead still and watched while Chanel and her sister’s young horse were doing all kinds of Bart manoeuvres (possibly a relation thing;)!!! Alfie won the 5th leg jumper and possibly the horse we are all keen to watch and want to steal in the future – watch out Elise!
Whilst we were down there, we were able to view, purchase and bring home Margs Carline’s and Tony Harris’s new horse Scissors which we are all pretty excited about… Watch this space!
COMING UP we have Taupo this weekend. We are taking a few of the horses to the dressage competition the day before, and then the Express trial on Sunday. Then next weekend we have our Spurs of Counties Clinic here at Waerenga which is seriously full and going to be a great weekend with a really cool group of instructors. Then the following weekend we are off to Te Rapa HT with some babies.
On the 26th & 27th September we have our event, Spurs of Counties Waerenga Horse Trial, click here to view the schedule and enter via Equestrian Entries. As you can imagine we have been crazy busy and we still have a heap to do to prepare for it. We are running an underlying Footrot Flats theme, so come along in your black singlets, short stubbies shorts and your gumboots!!!
Grandad 9 Toes and Baby Draper have been doing an incredible job helping us tidy up all of the yards so that you all have clean, safe and tidy yards for your ponies! Mike Gilfoyle and Hamish Butler-Gallie have already started building/moving and doing “stuff” for the XC, and Mark Fankhauser has begun working on a wooden feature for our course too 😉
We have four new girls working for us and really excited to have them all and we are enjoying learning a couple of new languages hahahaha. Nina (Anne-Catherine) is from Germany, Frenchie (Annelise) is from France and they are both here for a season or two. We also have two kiwi girls, Hannah and Jordy who are planning to be with us long term and we couldn’t be any happier with that plan, they are all super special girls!
Tangalooma is busy rehabbing, doing his 30 minute walks in the arena! Slow process, having to be super patient though that is proving to be super positive! Nice to see the main man back in the cross ties 🙂
See you all out there real soon!!!
Donna
Donna Smith Eventing 