Event Report: Tweseldown UA80cm - 14.04.19

After our first event a couple of weeks ago, I was eager to get Savannah back out eventing again and this week we tackled Tweseldown's Unaffiliated One Day Event. Having already been XC schooling there not to long ago, I was very much looking forward to seeing the course and taking Savs round it.

DRESSAGE

As last time Savannah was quite tense warming up for and throughout her test, I tried to allow a lot of extra time to give her the most relaxed and fun day possible. This went exactly to plan as I walked the XC course, collected my number and got tacked up and ready in plenty of time and we made our way to the dressage warm up completely at ease. I'd allowed a fair bit of time to just walk Savannah around and let her take everything in at her own pace, which lead to the best warm up I could have hoped for. She was completely relaxed and happy, and I headed towards our arena with quit high hopes of a cool, calm test. This unfortunately was not to be, as our judge decided the best time to blown the car horn to signal us to start was right as we walked directly in front of the car (this was in no way a malicious action - just a simple, albeit very irritating, mistake), causing Savannah to spook sideways. She was then slightly tense pretty much throughout the test, although there were some nice moments and it was a big improvement on last time. Very frustrating as she'd warmed up so well, and was capable of a much better test, but we scored a respectable 37.7 in quite a high scoring section.

SHOW JUMPING

Although the course was actually very nice, and suited Savannah well as there was plenty of room and no particularly sharp turns, it was always going to be a test for us both as Savs hadn't show jumped on grass before meaning I had very little idea of what she would make of it. Warming up she was jumping well, maybe a little to 'gung ho' for my liking to start off with, but when we got into the ring she did back off slightly. It wasn't the tidiest round, and I felt she was just lacking confidence slightly, but we got round, just knocking the last fence (a very upright plank going downhill) for 4 faults.

CROSS COUNTRY

I was very much looking forward to this phase as she'd given me such a great ride at Moreton, and the course was fairly straightforward with just a couple of slightly tougher questions. Savannah had obviously been paying attention and was very excited to get going, giving me a bit of a confidence boost as she was so keen to set off. We just popped a couple of fences for our warm up as I didn't want to tire her too much, and she was jumping them brilliantly. She was much more confident leaving the start box this time, meaning she got a much better stride to the first couple of fences and got into a good rhythm early on course. She made light work of the first few fences, but unfortunately had a bit of a babyish blip and the bogey fence (7a) resulting in two refusals (she basically came in looking everywhere but the fence as there were a lot of things going on around it, and the fence itself was jumping almost directly into the water). Luckily, I manged to coax her over it the third time and, after a slightly hesitant jump over fence 8, we were away again. She absolutely flew round the rest of the course, and apart from that slight mishap I couldn't have been happier with our round. It was so nice to feel her starting to have the confidence to take me into the fences and I really felt her confidence had rocketed as we went.

It was one of those very frustrating days where a couple of things just didn't go quite to plan (without the XC faults we would have finished inside the top 10) but overall I was extremely happy with her performance. We'd come out and improved on last time in both the dressage and SJ, and had had a fairly calm day which was a great experience for Savannah. We have a few things to take away and work on, and hopefully next time we go out we can improve upon our previous experiences.