PONY Bloggers: Flora’s Diary Part Two

Hi again! It’s Flora! In case you weren’t here last time, I’m Flora and I’m writing about what me and my pony, Bramble, do! I left you on a cliffhanger about arena eventing, so here’s what happened…

Our arena eventing schooling was a mixture of amazing and “oops” so, after an hour’s discussion, we decided that we weren’t going to the competition after all. We needed to work on straightness to narrow jumps first, and I didn’t want a tricky outing to knock my confidence when I’ve loved competing on Bramble so much lately. Luckily, we have been doing a lot more schooling and now I’m looking at the schedules for some competitions. There is a particular horseshoe jump at a local arena that I really really want to jump – my Pony Club friends and I are all hoping to jump it before each other!

We have been hacking a lot this month and I can tell you, sometimes it has been absolutely freezing! We mostly hack in the fields and on the roads around our village but sometimes we trailer to the top of a nearby hill and we hack there, although as it is more windy there, it is often EVEN colder there than in our fields! It has also sometimes been super muddy and deep after lots of rain – so much so that we haven’t been able to trot! We don’t want to lose any shoes or cause Bramble an injury so it’s been a bit boring, to be honest. Bramble and I are definitely looking forward to not wearing so many layers and going galloping about again! Brrrrrr!

We haven’t just been hacking though. We also did our first flatwork rally with a proper dressage instructor! We were mainly working on bending, as Bramble doesn’t like to bend very much!

This month we’ve been working towards our 60cm showjumping championships and doing as many spooky jumps as possible, even putting strange things under jumps that might make Bramble spook so we can practise! I also jumped my biggest jump ever at 90cm! Any ideas what we could do? Do you know any spooky fillers? Please get in touch by emailing PONY mag!

See you later,

Flora and Bramble