“With Keysoe Premier League drawing ever closer, we took Wiz (Wurlizer) and Del (Headmore Delegate) to Sparsholt for another practice at their unaffiliated show on Sunday 27 March. We had been training hard in the lead up to it and I was hoping for an improvement from both boys to give me a confidence boost before Keysoe.

Wiz’s superb changes

Wiz was on first doing the Grand Prix and he was not in the best of moods in the warm up, I think he is getting a bit bored of Sparsholt as he has competed there the last four times he’s been out! However he did settle but he wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders when we went into the test but overall it was much better. His piaffe is developing but he now struggles to maintain the extra expression we can now get as he is not quite strong enough, but the first few steps we had were amazing before he ran out of energy! The half passes and canter pirouettes were much better and, as always, his changes (which are his favourite bit) were superb. Unfortunately he ran out of puff on the final centre line so our last piaffe left a bit to be desired but on the whole it was much better than our first attempt and we are going the right way, let’s hope I don’t embarrass myself at Keysoe! We scored 65.11% to finish an eventual fifth.

Del’s return to PSG

It was then Del’s turn doing the PSG. He hadn’t been out for about two months but was very settled and warmed up well. He has really progressed over the winter and is much stronger and more expressive and was phenomenal in the warm up. He got a little tense in the test but there were no major mistakes, although there is still a lot of room for improvement once he has gained some confidence at the level. We scored 68.68% and won and he is now all set to contest the PSGs at Keysoe in a couple of weeks.

Overall, it was a very good warm up for Keysoe and fingers crossed for that, I think I’ll need all the help I can get!”