What a great start to the new year for our youngsters at Callum Park. Fresh with super training from the great clinic we had with Natasja Van Den Bogaert, our 6 year old Don Rubin and 4 year old Callum Park Leodacaprio put their best feet forward at their first competition of the year, held at the beautiful grounds here in Canberra at the ACT dressage association's first competition for 2012.  We'd entered for the young horse competition up at Clarendon for the Saturday but sadly they had to cancel due to bad weather so we had Saturday off. This was super, and enabled me to properly plait up all horses for once - yes hackie mates - I sewed all my plaits in can you believe? They do look super, luckily I practised at the hack show a couple weeks ago (see left with champion hack Leo!) but geez they're really hard to take out - so I made others do it! First up to go was lovely little Leo, as usual "Mr Perfect" did his test beautifully, although he spooked in a corner, which was really quite surprising to me as he never does anything wrong... anyway, whatever he's 4 and gets a leave pass! We happily settled for 2nd place to the awesome Megan Bryant, herself no slouch, Leo achieving a super percentage of 70% regardless. What a nice little mate he has grown into, so confident in his work and just ticks every box. Its lovely to see how the little guys come along when you've seen them since their first day in the world. As we're heading to the gorgeous Bradgate Park in Orange next week and have to do a medium test with Don Rubin we thought we'd cut our teeth on the 4B at ACTDA. We were aiming to just run around the test and find our sore spots to work on. As usual the beautiful, talented little superstar Toby had other ideas. He warmed up like a champ, of course as every dressage rider knows - this means your test will turn to poo, but in this case no! Toby just rocks and the harder work really suits him. I could go on for ever (what rider doesn't when they finally nail a test?) but long story short, despite stupid rider forgetting an entire movement...he won the test in a hugely classy field against super sonic horses with 69.8%!  Toby (left as a 4 year old) also won his elementary with 67% and all the horses were worshipped as the little Gods they were that night, and much champagne was drunk!  Thanks so much for all the help from our friends and supporters on the day, super groom and team (horses and people!) psychologist Courtney Schmitzer as usual providing services above and beyond, Russell Jarrett uber husband and VIP catering manager (because you ALWAYS need champagne - win, lose or draw), and good mate Rachel Regan, super owner and mate Pip Mitton, and champion Kyla Williams, and gorgeous Phoebe (yes you'll get to groom soon mate!), thanks for all the help champs. So all in all a super start to the year with our little Callum Park team. It's really super to bring out horses we have bred (see Leo as a foal above) and trained from the start, and watched them grow into lovely horses and the lovely people they've become. Good luck in the new year everyone and happy riding, Cheers, Suz |
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