Loewe Leisure
This was my first visit to Loewe Leisure at Eccleston Equestrian Centre, and at just 8 miles down the road is probably the closest venue to home. This is a really nice little centre with an outdoor school in the centre of a horse-shoe of stables, with a large indoor arena with seating and a small café and offices alongside.
This was the first time I had to travel and get ready by myself so I was rather nervous. Not helped by Jad having a tantrum on the wagon because in his considered opinion he wasn’t being given enough attention. However, I knew that Andrea (caller-in-chief and general moral support) and Nick (sponsor/groom/mechanic/photographer/shoulder to cry on) would be meeting me before the start of the test so that helped dispel some fears.
For all his behaviour on the wagon, Jad was a complete angel once allowed off it. He had a good stare round at the venue before allowing me to hop on and then calmly walked around the warm-up arena having a good look at everything. Unfortunately, once asked to work he decided that he’d put in enough effort for the day and went a bit flat. He was very good and well-behaved but without his usual sparkle. This was most obvious in his medium work… instead of leaping into it with ears forward and powering across the diagonal, it was more a case of eventually building up to it with a half-hearted effort.
Getting into the arena itself was a chore. He had to step down out of the warm-up arena onto a piece of rubber matting, which apparently is very scary. I would have been embarrassed had the competitor before me not had the exact same problem. Unfortunately that same competitor had similar problems leaving the arena which reduced my opportunities for warm-up a bit, but that’s life.
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Medium Trot
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The indoor itself was very spooky. The judge was parked with the nose of the car right on C with an open gate behind her onto the horsebox park. The warm-up arena was visible from S so there were 2 points that Jad found worrying. This reflected in how he rode and there was quite a bit of tenseness throughout. Plus the general lack of spark he showed when warming up affected his usually lovely medium work. What also didn’t help was that the judge had her car window open so I could actually hear her calling the marks as I rode past! If she’d been calling 8s it wouldn’t have been a problem, but hearing a 6 is a bit off-putting!
So, not our best performance but he still achieved 61.7 so that’s another point on his card at least. Plus it was good enough for 3rd place in the Restricted section. I’ll have to keep going back until he gets used to the arena and then I’m sure we’ll improve.
No time to reflect really as it’s only 5 days to our next outing.