Rob Waine Dressage -

It won’t be long until Summer is in full swing and the T-shirt tan makes its yearly appearance!!

It’s a hive of activity in our summer paddocks at the moment, fertilizing, harrowing and rolling along with some fancy new fencing. The winter was absolutely horrendous with all the rain, at times it did look like we needed Noah and his Ark but compared to some other yards we got off lightly being able to turnout all winter as normal!! It’s very important for me that the horses get out in to the fields for their downtime. Rhodesia loves his paddock!!

Talking of Rhodesia, what a star he has been recently….

At the beginning of February we contested the Winter Regionals at Patchetts. Having qualified for 3 classes it was a busy couple of days including one 4am start!! Lets hope there isn’t another of those for a while!!! Happy to report we won our third regional title, this time in the Novice Open Freestyle with just under 80%!! The shows highest score!!! Our Elementary qualifier went well, there were a couple of communication errors, cantering down the centerline when your supposed to be in medium tort can be very expensive with 3 judges! I will admit thay I came out of the ring feeling we had thrown away our chance of qualifying….just shows that you never know though….the judges must of liked us as they awarded us a score of just under 70%!! I couldn’t believe it!! We settled for runner up slot in this class but another golden ticket to the nationals! There was a great atmosphere at the show with many of my liveries, clients and amazing sponsors coming to support us, I am lucky to have such a great team around me.

After the hectic few days of the regionals Rhodesia enjoyed a couple of easy days hacking before I picked him up ready for our lesson with Carl..and what a lesson it was… He was so pleased with how we had progressed since he last saw us, Rhodesia was amazing as ever. Our collection work in both the trot and canter is getting stronger even a few strides of baby passage made an appearance! The changes are still a little exuberant to say the least but once the Winters are out of the way we’ll crack on with them.

With the fab lesson and on Carl’s advice we decided to enter the boy into his first mediums, he didn’t let us down. With a score of 71% in M73 we were over the moon. The first test felt good but the second felt incredible, the judges felt so too, M75….75%!!! The boy just seems to find everything easy as he progresses up, exciting times ahead.

The events diary is starting to get pretty jammed up as well. A couple of weeks ago, we hosted a Why Can’t I Do This workshop alongside Gill Garside. The evening focused on getting to know your horse, riding with a positive mind during certain situations, nerves and goal setting. It was a really interesting evening and everyone lest feeling positive, inspired and focused on the goals they wanted to achieve with their horses. Keep checking my website and Facebook for more of these planned evenings.

We have also been busy bees planning our exciting summer season of Unaffiliated Dressage Competitions!! Held throughout May, June, July and August, classes will range from Walk-Trot through to Elementary including Chiltern & Thames Qualifiers! Along side we will be running our veru own league! At each show, horse and rider combinations are awarded points dependent on their placings. The winner across the board will be announced at the last show winning lots of fab prizes including 4 lessons with me, goodies from my sponsors Equine Essentials Direct, Protexin Equine Premium and Stuart Equine. Prizes will be awarded to third place!!

On the subject of sponsors I have been lucky enough to attract another!! Sharon from Stuart Equine is an Equine Sports Massage Therapist, she trained with Mary Bromley (the goddess of treating animals) Sharon comes fornightly to make sure all the competition horses are kept in tip top condition. I have to say I always feel a massive difference in the horses after she has been and would highly recommend her.