"With the snow gone and things returning to some resemblance of normality, it was time to start competing again, and not just any old competition, it was the first ‘big one’ of the year. I had my first regional on Monday 8th February at Patchetts. My first time was 18:54 and my second time was 21:04 so we knew we were in for a late one.

Andrew and I left with both horses on time, which was a complete miracle as we had spent all morning trying to find one of the CDs! I had practiced the test on the Friday before and we had put the CD somewhere where we thought it would be safe… it turned out we were wrong. As there was no backup CD and we couldn’t burn another one, we exhausted all options trying to find it, including checking in the fridge, the ovens and bins! Thankfully, we did manage to get another CD; although it wasn’t exactly the same we decided it was better than nothing!

We arrived with plenty of time and I got on my first horse Olivia, a 14 year old Dutch bred bay mare owned by my friend Amy and was competing in the advanced medium freestyle. She warmed up well and I was pleased with the test. It was only the second time I had competed her and, despite a few small errors, the test flowed well, and I managed to make it fit the music despite it being a different CD to the one I had practiced to. Having listened to it for half the journey there I knew it well enough to realise where I had to cut a few corners! We were pleased with a mark of 67.11% and 9th place in a hot class.

My next test was in the Prix St. George freestyle with my own horse, Wurlizer, a 10 year old gelding by Weltmeyer. He was very buzzy from the moment I got on him, probably due to the late hour and the snow, and the prize giving that occurred whilst I was warming him up just made him more wound up. He got sharper and sharper the more I sat on him and by the time we got in the test he was very on edge, which culminated in him getting very over the top and boiling over, causing some very costly resistances and mistakes! This meant that it was not the result we had hoped for but horses are not machines and sometimes they have an off-day!"