Alice Oppenheimer

A fantastic start to the New Year

I can’t believe that January 2011 has flown past so quickly, it seems like only yesterday we were celebrating Christmas and New Year... but I’m going to stop reminiscing as it makes me sound old!

We have started to go out competing again in preparation for the regionals with Headmore Boadicia (Bracks) and Headmore Downtopia (Dante). We took them both to Crofton on the 7th January, Dante for two elementaries and Bracks for an elementary and a medium. Both were very pleased to be out as they hadn’t been out to a party for a while, but this meant they were both a bit exuberant! Dante managed to keep calm enough in the first test to score 66.55% and finish 2nd, but his enthusiasm got the better of him in the second test and he got a little too over the top! Bracks was also very enthusiastic in the first test so she scored a below par 66.87%, finishing 2nd. However, she settled better for the medium test and scored 68.92% with a few little mistakes, but it was good enough to win. Thankfully, now they have changed the qualification rules, you don’t have to win to qualify as the points count now!

Following that rather hair raising outing, we thought it would probably be a good idea to take them out again and hope that this time it was rather more under control! So we went back to the scene of the crime... well Crofton! Both horses were doing two elementary tests, and one of them was elementary 58, grrr!
Dante was on first and he warmed up well, although he started to get a little excited towards the end, but he managed to keep it all under control to score 69.12% and finished 3rd. After that, we went into the elementary 58 and he was absolutely amazing until the last centre line when he started to get a little hot again, but he still scored 68.75%, finishing 3rd again. It was then Bracks’ turn and in the first test she went fairly well but we had a couple of little misunderstandings where she was trying to be too helpful! However, we still scored 69.71% and finished 2nd. We then went into elementary 58 and, although she was a little spooky in places, she made a really good job of a difficult test, apart from the last simple change! We scored 70.63% and just finished 2nd, although without the mistake we would have won, frustrating!

Wurlizer (Wizard) and Headmore Delegate (Del) also had an outing. I was brave enough to enter my first Inter II with Wiz and Del did his first PSG, both at our local unaffiliated show held at Sparsholt College. We decided to do the unaffiliated as, in theory, there would be no one there to watch so if it all went pear shaped it wouldn’t matter! Wiz was on first and he hadn’t been out to a party since the Nationals in September and he was so excited to be going on the lorry again, his face lit up and he sped up the ramp! He was a little excited to start off with but he settled well for the test. My aim was to go down the centre line at the beginning, do everything we had to do in pretty much the correct place and then go down the centre line at the end again! You can only imagine how pleased I was when we had no major mistakes; it was just a bit green, which was understandable! We scored 68.68%, which I was absolutely thrilled with. It was then Del’s turn, but his warm up was not ideal as there weren’t many in the class so there wasn’t much of a gap between the two tests. However, he went beautifully in the test and found it all so easy, he just gets better and better the harder the tests get! He scored 71.54%, which we were all ecstatic with!

At the end of January I had a weekend break which my best friend, Amy had got for me for my birthday. Everyone had managed to keep where we were going a secret... until the night before we left when my sister accidently let it slip! We left on Friday lunchtime for Bruges in Belgium and were away for the weekend. It is a beautiful city with cobbled streets where horse and carts get just as much right of way as cars. There is also a gorgeous tower which you can climb. It has 366 steps, which doesn’t sound like much but believe me it is very steep and narrow and the steps are tiny, so it was quite hard work, but the view from the top of the tower was spectacular and well worth the effort! We also had a guided tour of Bruges on a horse and cart, which was lovely. Our horse was called Sarah and we picked one which was sound and plump! The rest of the time was spent trying the local delicacies; Belgian waffles, chocolate and, of course, beer! We discovered fruit beers, some of which were nicer than others with cherry being the favourite, but we were brave enough to try all of them, banana beer and strawberry beer were certainly different, but passion fruit beer and apple beer were absolutely delicious! We had an absolutely fantastic time and I really enjoyed the weekend break, but we are now back to the grind and looking forward to the new season!

Alice