Wild horse to show horse

I'm late posting this, but i have finally got around to sharing the good news. The wild mare, Fern, went to her first show and did fantastically. Travelled well, behaved fantastically and jumped like a super star. Couldn't really have asked for much more.

It was the first event of the Autumn calender, and i took three horses, just to keep me busy for the weekend. Fern, my big warm blood, and another young pony I'm schooling for a friend. The Wild mare however was the star of the show. doing a fantastic dressage test, clear showjumping, not blinking an eye at the colourful poles, and galloped around the cross country like shes been doing it all her life. Although, gallop may be a strong word, grey thought a sedate canter was far more appropriate, and so she cruised up and down hill, through the water jump and across the flats in a beautiful relaxed pace.

Showjumping



 Finishing the dressage

For those of you who may not know, i do eventing, which consists of three phases. First always is the dressage, based on how well you ride a pattern, and how your horse goes, it basically testing your accuracy and finesse as a rider and seeing how obliging and obedient your horse is. You get a percentage mark, that is then converted into penalty points, with the aim being to get the lowest penalties.

Second phase, in a one or two day event, is showjumping. This is just a course of colourful jumps set up in a set order. For every rail you knock down, you get four penalties, if your horse stops, four penalties again, also if you go over time, you get penalties for every second you go over. The idea is to be under time and leave all the jumps up, not adding to your dressage score.

Thirdly is the cross country, basically big solid obstacles like logs, ramps, ditches, drops into water etc etc, usually there will be about twenty jumps in a course, and its is a lot longer than the showjumping. For every jump you horse refuses, or runs out at, you get twenty penalties, and again if your over the time you get penalties for every second that your over.

The aim of eventing really is to get the lowest dressage score possible, and then don't add any jump penalties to it. which is exactly what Fern did. Which is awesome for any horses first competition let alone a wild horses.