So the event season has come to a close and we’ve got four months until it starts again. However, Percy and I managed to squeeze in a couple of events before the end of October.

The first of which was at Broadway for the BE Novice. Percy had a good dressage of 32, which was quite well placed in the section, I think about 7th. Unfortunately in the showjumping he showed quite a lot of discomfort in his mouth and actually almost stopped at a fence, but motion carried him forward and he crashed through the fence. He then jumped the majority of the course much better… but did the same at the last fence when I half halted him! He threw his head back, smacking me in the face and then had the fence down. He’d not long had his wolf teeth out and I think this was giving him a bit of discomfort. I decided that I wouldn’t run cross-country because I didn’t want to cause him any more discomfort, as it was very unlike him to behave in that way.

So, when I travelled 100 miles for our last run of the season I was feeling somewhat nervous as to how our day would go. We went to Norton Disney for the BE Novice again. After our previous run our main aim was to just have a nice final run to end our season. I thought he did his best test at Novice this season, but the judge said I rode cautiously and we only scored 35.8 which was disappointing. Despite this I was really pleased with how relaxed and settled he was.

Next up was the showjumping and he jumped an impeccable round with a lovely rhythm. He was super careful and left all the poles in their cups! The cross-country was a nice track, had plenty of skinny combinations and was super tight on the time. Percy headed off a little spooky but as soon as we got to the first question at fence 6 he put his professional head on and sailed round the rest of the course. He was actually the 5th fastest in the section, to come home with only 2.4 time-faults. This helped pull us up from 28^th place after the dressage into 9th place and also gained Percy his first BE point! What a fabulous way to finish our season… I’m super proud of him!

Before Percy got to go out on his holidays he just had a couple of riding club area dressage qualifiers to do. The first of these was the Intermediate qualifiers, where he did the Novice 30 and gained 72.8% – good enough for 5th place and his team were 4^th overall! At the same competition Florence did the D10 where she scored a 72% for 4th and her team were 2nd. Pleasing results in large classes.

The next qualifier was the novice dressage where they both competed in the D10 but in different arenas, Percy got a fair score of 68.3%, which was good enough for 6th, but Florence who usually gets pretty good scores at riding club competitions only got 66.25% and was down in 9^th. Neither teams were placed so this was a disappointing day.

As I didn’t manage to get Florence out to any more events before the close of the season, I decided to have a go at a bit of affiliated dressage to finish her 2015 season. We headed to Prescott for our first British Dressage competition, which was also our first ever competition entered through Equo! Talk about easy to enter! Once you have registered with Equo and they have all yours and your horse’s details, entering events is so simple. It merely takes just a few clicks of a button and the job is done.

Our day went very well indeed (despite being a little put off by all of the flashy warmbloods prancing around when we first arrived). We did Novice 22 and had a very pleasant test for 69.14%, which was good enough for 2nd in the open section and 2nd overall. We then did Novice 38, which felt a much more expressive test, but under a different judge we scored 66.94% again… however it was good enough for 2nd in the open and 2nd overall!

So we now have our first British Dressage points and even came home with a little bit of prize money. A good start for Florence and I under BD rules.