“We had the first of a busy few weeks last week; we were at Hartpury College for the CDI with both Wiz (Wurlizer) and Del (Headmore Delegate). Wiz was entered in the big tour (scary stuff) and Del was doing the small tour.

We arrived on the Wednesday evening to get both boys settled in before the trot up on Thursday. Amy, my best friend, was grooming for me so both boys looked really smart and, thankfully, both passed the trot up without a hitch. I was drawn very good times for the first day of competition on Friday 15, Del was the penultimate horse to go in the PSG and Wiz was fifth last to go in the Grand Prix.

Del’s first international

Del warmed up fairly well for the PSG, but he got a bit tense and genuinely worried in the atmosphere as it was his first International and there was quite a buzz in the ring. This resulted in him becoming tight in the neck which resulted in a test that was very below par for what Del is capable of. He still scored 65% to finish twelfth, so it wasn’t a complete disaster! It was then Wiz’s turn in the Grand Prix. It was my first International Grand Prix and the standard was high, I was just hoping for a test that I was pleased with as we are not yet established enough or confident enough at that level yet. He warmed up very well, my trainer, Erik Theilgaard, was there to help me warm up and I was feeling quite confident as we went into the ring. We had a few mistakes and there is still much more to come in the piaffe and passage, but he stayed with me and he really tried his best, thankfully I had given him some of my trusty Nupafeed to stop him worrying about the really tricky stuff, and it worked!  We scored just under 63%, which considering his stage of training at the moment and the mistakes, wasn’t bad at all. A lot of people said to me that they thought I deserved more than I had got, including a number of people who were also in the class, which was very nice to hear! That evening, we went out for dinner with Wiz’s breeder, Judith Davis, and we organised to go over to her stud on the Sunday to have a look round.

Del gets a little cocky

Saturday was Del’s Inter I and he was much more settled than on the Friday, he actually went a bit the other way and was too cocky and silly, which meant that we had some very silly mistakes as Del was trying to be too clever! This left us with a score of 64.5%, which considering the mistakes wasn’t bad, but unfortunately we finished in sixteenth place, meaning that we just missed out on qualifying for the music as the top 15 go through, which was a shame. That evening we went to the gala evening and watched the Grand Prix freestyle, as well as a stallion parade and the young horse championship winners. It was a very enjoyable evening!

Meeting Wiz’s mum

I just had the Grand Prix Special to do on Sunday, which wasn’t until after 5pm, so on Sunday morning we went to Wiz’s breeder at Hawtins Stud to have a look round. The first thing we did was meet Wizard’s Mum, Brentina. As you can imagine I was very excited about this and there were some real similarities between the two. Brentina is now 17 and still breeding and she had a lovely foal at foot, Wiz’s half brother, by Sir Donnerhall. In the same field there was a gorgeous Belissimo foal who reminded me so much of Bracks (Headmore Boadicia) and I wanted to take her home! After that we meet some of the other young stock and there were quite a few which really caught my eye! It was lucky that I didn’t have any money as I think we would have been bringing slightly more than two horses home from Hartpury!  There were some really lovely horses and I will definitely be going back to buy a few when I have some spare cash! Once we were back at Hartpury it was a case of organising ourselves for the Grand Prix Special. Neither Wiz nor I had ever done the test before and I would have been pleased if I had just remembered where I was supposed to be going! We had quite a few mistakes in the test, the vast majority of them out of greenness, and I hadn’t realised quite how much harder the special in than the straight Grand Prix! Overall I was pleased with how Wiz went, it was far from perfect but I think he did the best he could at the moment, and our attempt was good enough to finish seventh, so not at all bad for our first International Grand Prix!”