Lets see, since my last brief but momentous post (for me anyway) lots has happened. I am now 12 weeks pregnant. We had another scan last Friday and all looks great. It was really awesome to see the little one sleeping peacefully (takes after Mom). Doc then nudged around a bit to get Junior to move, where upon he/she did a big stretch, yawn, and then pretty much went back to sleep. I love this kid

The Doc also made an early prediction that this may be a boy. Of course this is way too soon to say for certain, but if she were to put money on it, she’d say boy. She also said she wouldn’t put money on it.

We decided we’d tell this news to the family, a decision I’m regretting slightly. When we uttered the words “looks like it might be a boy”, seems all the family heard was “boy!”. My mom-in-law was so excited (I’d previously said that I thought it would be a girl – just my own feeling) that she burst into tears. She came round two days later with 3 little boy outfits! So while I wasn’t hoping either way before, now I’m offering up some prayers that it is a boy after all, just to spare the (initial) disappointment.

Roughly the third question everyone asks me when they hear I’m pregnant is “So what about your horse / Are you going to stop horse-riding?”. It’s been getting on my nerves a bit. I don’t want to endanger my unborn child, but seriously folks! I’ve been riding a minimum of 5 times a week since I was around 6 years old! I haven’t driven a car that often, but no-one asks me if I’m going to stop driving. I think I can do this sensibly. I haven’t been riding much (time constraints and other issues) since I found out I was pregnant, and it’s been driving me insane. At first it wasn’t too bad. I was so tired I wouldn’t want to go and ride, but now my energy is returning I feel this profound loss off accomplishment. It’ll be 10 PM and time to go to bed but I don’t want to go! I don’t feel like I have done anything all day – despite working 10 or 12 hour days recently.

So yes, I will continue riding – gently and with consideration – a couple of times a week until it feels unsafe. If I start to loose balance or get anxious about it, I’ll stop. If my horse is having a bad/mad day, I’ll get off. I won’t do any jumping or competitions. I will be sensible about it. I can do that.

Anyway, enough about that.

I have noticed from my Google Analytics stats that I get fairly regular hits from India, Dillip, is that you? If it is, leave a comment and say Hi …

Also, quite a few folks have found my blog searching for Smiths Motorcycles. I’d expect it’s this post that brings them here. While I didn’t explicitly say that Smiths was where I had such shocking service with my bike, I did tag them on the post, and I suppose you can draw the link yourselves. Well, the guy can do a good job, but it may just take you half a year to get your bike back …

Well, that’s all for now folks. Will try to post a little more regularly again.

I’m been pulling my hair about my horse for the last week. Over the course of 5 days he went from his usual state of partially freaked out into total freak-out overdrive mode. He was almost unworkable, I had to spend 70% of our sessions just trying to get him to calm down enough so we could continue with what we were actually supposed to be doing. I was close to the end of my tether, contemplating giving him 6 months off just so I could have a break from him.

Then today I took him to a three-phase event. It’s not his forte: he’s usually two tense for the dressage phase and the cross country really rattles his brain cell. He’s a definite ‘look-before-you-leap type, and cross country requires a brave horse that’s willing to do things like plunge into water without knowing how deep it might be or jump off a bank without being able to see the landing until the last stride.

Once a year I take him to one of these events because all the galloping across the countryside does make him a little braver when he gets to his usual competition style: show jumping. I also have a theory that it makes him grateful for the bigger but less scary looking jumps in the show-jumping ring.

Well today he totally outdid himself. We arrived late and unprepared: I’d left my boots at home. Hunny raced back home to fetch them for me while I completed a very hurried warm up. Hunny arrived back just in time for me to put my boots on and trot into the dressage arena. He stayed calm *very unusual for him* and did his best dressage test ever. The judge wrote on out comment sheet “What an obedient and willing horse” – that’s a first!

We went out into the country a penalty score of 43.6, lying in second place behind someone with a penalty score of 38, and with two score of 44 right behind me. We had a great cross country round, he started out good and just got better. He trotted straight into the two water complexes on the course, stayed focused and obedient into the skinny (narrow) jumps and really opened out his stride across the long distances between jumps. When I pulled up at the finish I know I was clear for jumping, but I didn’t know if I’d incurred any time penalties.

The third phase is show jumping – his forte – so I was pretty convinced he’d do okay at that, especially considering it was about half the height he normally jumps in dedicated show-jumping competitions. I learnt just before the show-jumping started that after the cross country points had been tallied we were in first place. We were inside the ideal time, so we got no time penalties, and the person who was beating me had a couple of stops in the country, incurring extra penalties.

After finding this out I was so nervous I could hardly bring myself to warm up! No worries, Dartmoor did his job and gave a lovely clear round. It was only afterwards that I learnt that the guy I had beaten into second was only 0.4 penalties behind me! But we won! Amazing! My timid little show-jumper won a three-phase event and totally redeemed himself.

I suppose the highs are as high as the lows are low. That’s my boy!

*okay, I’ll stop blogging about my horse now*

He’s had some sterling moments and achieved a fair amount of success. When he’s relaxed and confident he is truly brilliant. He has such an outstanding jumping technique. He jumps clean and carefully. He hates to touch a pole. But his confidence is so precarious: a couple of wrong moves on my part and it can take weeks for him to regain it. He’ll also never do a derby course. Banks, ditches and water-jumps scare the living daylights out of him. We once spent over an hour trying to get him to cross a ditch, 5 people. We eventually physically pushed him through. His mind had gone totally awol, his body was still with us, but he’s face had gone completely blank, you couldn’t get any reaction out of him.

All of this adds up to a competition show-jumper that isn’t really worth the effort you have to put in. Part of me wants to give up on him, but I can’t. I’m still trying to prove to all his detractors that he can make it in the higher grades, I want to reach the limits of his talent, not just the limits of his mind / confidence. He’s also too expensive to just have hanging around and like I said, I couldn’t sell him. So I keep working with him.

Occasionally I train a couple of other horses, as I am doing at the moment, and I’m struck by how much easier they are to work with. It makes me start to resent Dartmoor. I feel like after all this I deserve something easier. I have dreamt before that I had killed him (well, somebody had, I think it was me). When I saw his beautiful though lifeless face I sobbed and told him how sorry I was, but even in the dream I was secretly relieved that I could now move on. While I wouldn’t kill him in real life, I imagine that’s how I would feel if anything did happen to him: Terribly sad, but guilty relieved.

Once he’d settled he jumped quite well though. Bastard.