Rob Waine Dressage -

The weeks are flying by and the nights are getting lighter, FINALY! I must admit I have been counting the minutes since the shortest day back in December.

 

I am sat writing this from the, can you believe it sunny and quite warm North, Myerscough College to be exact. Mari my Grade 1 para client is competing at the Para Winter National championships. Today is the first day and she rode a super test posting a 70+% score. Hopefully I will be able to update you all tomorrow on how she has been crowned National Champion, fingers crossed.

 

So went on here at Rob Waine Dressage last month? January seems a bit of blur now seeing that we are nearly at the end of February but flicking back through my diary it certainly wasn’t a quiet one.

 

At the beginning of the month we welcomed Horse & Hound to the yard for a photo shoot on stable rugs. For the past year we have been very proudly taking part in their ‘tried and tested’ online feature. Every so often we are set lots of products from different brands and it’s our job to compare them giving them marks out of ten. I have to admit that I wasn’t convinced anyone actually read the findings until I received an email from a lady in New Zealand who had seen our feature on fly rugs, she wanted to know more details about the one we thought was the best. It really does show you, amazing!!! Keep your eyes peeled to our Facebook or Horse & Hound online to found out what we thought of the stable rugs.

 

The horses have all been going well. Can you believe I actually got a clean flying change each way from Sanssouci!! Shall we say they haven’t been the most easiest of things to teach her, a slight understatement. After 18 months of flying without wings and keeping the local chiropractor in business with my back and some great advice from Carl we seem to rockin an rollin! I am hoping that she will make her debut at Advanced Medium later in the Spring. Nasa has been going from strength to strength. I decided to pop a entry into the Addington Manor High profile show at PSG and I am glad I did. Although the score was lower then what I would have wanted usually I have to remember that it was only his second PSG so really pleased. The trot work was super, the walk, pat the pony and smack the rider!! As I turned across for the walk pirouettes I wasn’t sure whether it was left or right first, left right, left right, left right, I went right…..It was left!!!!!! The canter work started well, canter pirouettes I was happy, the flying changes he just got ahead of me thinking he knew was came next. We did show something quite interesting but not sure it was required at that level. The plan now is to get him out to some local shows so that I can get the mileage on him in the ring before the big Premier League shows start in April where we will hopefully gain our International qualifying scores to go abroad. Florida Sun or Summer Dream as she is now known has settled in to life with us well. I have been working on improving her balance and strength through lots of transitions; she is such a workaholic! I try to hack her a lot to also help with building the strength. Maybe she will do a young horse class when the start for the experience of being at a show and being in the ring with another horse, it’s a great way to introduce them.

 

I am happy to report that Autumn our VIP broadmare is doing super and that her or should I say Sansscouci’s baby is cooking away nicely inside of her. Not long now till we hopefully hear the sound of tiny hooves!!!

 

Talking of breeding. Back at the beginning of February Ben and I made a short trip across the pond to the KWPN (Dutch) stallion show held in Den Bosch, Holland. It was a great day watching all the young stallions being put through their paces, selected or not selected before being dwindled down to the 2019 champion being selected. I have to say that I love the fact that you can sit there and see several horses all from the same stallion to see the same traits that they have. A there were two highlights for me this year. One was the retirement ceremony of Glock’s Johnson, having trained one of his offspring from Novice to International Small Tour it was nice to see the crowds waving him a fond farewell into his long and happy retirement. My second highlight, I am sure you can guess was the appearance of Totilas. It was lovely to see him back in the big ring where he belongs, obviously this time in hand rather then being ridden. We had been lucky to have seen him at the stables of Paul Schockemöhle back in the Summer of 2018, he had looked different then, almost just another horse in the long line of stables, quite sad really. But here his chest was puffed up and he loved it!!

 

Until next time…

 

Rob x