Where on earth has this year gone?! I can’t believe it is nearly May… and more to the point, Classy still hasn’t dropped her baby. I was hoping have lots of cute foal pictures to show you all by now, but she’s determined to keep hanging on – I think she’s trying to increase my stress levels as much as possible. By my next blog I’m sure we will have some much more exciting news!

Talking of exciting news, it was awesome to see myself and Taking The Biscuit (Patch) in Horse & Hound magazine last week. The picture was from our showing show at Willow Banks.

We had a wonderful day, with Patch bringing home three seconds, a first and reserve champion. A great start to the show season. It definitely seems that Willow Banks is our lucky venue – we are yet to leave without a red rosette!

Ever the allrounder, Patchy pony’s next outing was an Eventer Trial at White House Farm. This was a great concept, at a fab and friendly venue. There was the option to do dressage, showjumping and cross-country as a one-day-event or a single discipline, and each phase was placed separately.

I decided to do all three phases and we had a super day, winning the dressage with 74.1%, which is a personal best for both the pony and myself. We also went and won our showjumping class with the only double clear.

Unfortunately they do say pride comes before a fall and less than an hour later, I found myself upside down in the ditch of a rather large trakehner! It was my own fault, Patch was taking a super hold and giving me a great spin, and knowing she would probably have a look I decided to kick on rather than give her chance to think about it… she saw it last minute, but we were past the point of no return by then!

I did climb out and complete the course and it did nothing to dampen our spirits. I’m a firm believer in laughing and moving on. I’m hoping to go cross-country schooling over the next few weeks to give Patch a confidence boost.

My next planned outings for Patch are evening showjumping at Speetely Equestrian Centre and trailblazers Working Hunter at Moorhouse, both of which I found on Equo Events! My entry for Newark and Nottinghamshire County Show in the middle of May has also been accepted, so it’s going to be another busy month for the old girl!

Oakley, by contrast, has been a little challenging recently and so we have been focusing more on training than competing. He did however go to an evening dressage competition this month.

On paper it was not our best dressage outing as Oakley, despite warming up beautifully outdoors, found being indoors on his own (where he could hear other horses but not see them) rather traumatic! He didn’t do anything wrong, he was just very tense, however there were several sevens awarded when he did relax. I can’t help but be pleased with him really, he just needs more miles and experience.

Included in our training was a fantastic dressage lesson with Robyn Wetherall. Robyn has helped me hugely with GT’s schooling and behaviour in the past and has given me lots of exercises and suggestions to keep Oakley and his attitude busy! We have also enjoyed lots of long lining around the farm to get him thinking for himself. I am in no rush whatsoever with Oakley, so there is nothing in the pipeline for him over the next couple of weeks competitively, but I am hoping to hire a course of showjumps for him to have a pop round.

Monty Brown is now at boarding school with Boogie Machin for a good few weeks, as although going sweetly at home, he needed more work than I could realistically give him and he was always being put on the back burner.

Monty is a horse that thrives on plenty of work so we made the difficult decision to send him away to get him going. He has been to his first dressage competition today and although very tense did some nice work – I’m really pleased with how he is coming along. It was hard for me to see someone else doing what I love to do, but at the same time it was lovely to be an owner for the day and enjoy the competition without the early morning, bathing, packing the lorry and plaiting up. However, I did fee twice as nervous as I would have done if I had been riding!

On Monday 2 May I am judging at Epworth and District Riding Club showing show and I’m really looking forward to it. There are lots of classes for everybody and we have some gorgeous Equo rosettes to give out, as well as rugs, sashes and trophies!

The classes are available to enter online here: www.equoevents.com/ViewEvent/ViewEventDetails/1649 and it should be a lovely fun day out for all. Please do come and support us if you are in the area.

That’s all for now, I will keep you up to date with baby news as soon as there is some!

Team Taylor

Do you enjoy reading Claire Taylor’s blogs? If so remember to find out what else Team Taylor have been up to in her other Equo brand ambassador blogs.