Sarah-Jane Brown May Blog 2021

Out of Lockdown – We evented

It has been a difficult year for so many people who have been deeply affected by the COVID pandemic. Job wise as an Environmental Health professional I have been heavily involved ensuring businesses are compliant with COVID regulations by helping and supporting them to get it right as well as taking appropriate enforcement action for those that blatantly ignore the rules. I am now a webinar expert who has cowritten and delivered 50 in the last year around COVID topics.

Horse wise we did virtually nothing last year, the highlight was our Dengie training day in January and then we never got to BE event. We did a little showjumping and dressage but nothing that significant. Sadly my little pocket rocket Ellie developed a bone cyst in her pedal bone which later in the year required an operation. This was not immediately successful and as I write this, tomorrow she is being dropped off to stud and we will see how she is in 18 months. Certainly the way she is moving around the field is encouraging.

I only have Fliss up and riding currently although hope to have my 5 year old homebred back in work soon. Poor Fliss feels therefore she is overworked, saying that she is looking rather well and certainly thriving on her Alpha A diet.

In April it was great to finally get out and we started with some dressage. She has improved hugely over the winter and I was looking forward to showing off this. We went to Bicton Arena where the competition was fierce and sadly brought up the rear in one class and were lower middling in the other. Aren’t horses great levellers? She went just a bit tight and tense on me and was sure there was some jumping somewhere! Two days later we were out again at Tall Trees and a much improved performance gave us a double dressage win.

We jumped at Pendarves for a BS show and had double clears and placings in the 1.10 and 1.15. Then the following week after missing the entire 2020 season we finally got out eventing. With the firm ground I was pleased we had chosen Bicton who make such great efforts to get the ground as good as possible for the competitors. We dropped down to BE100 open and this time she did a nice test for 30. Showjumping wasn’t an issue and we were clear although a big spook at 2 could have been costly. Cross country was a decent test for the level and ideal for us before we step back to Novice. She flew round for 0.4 of penalty to finish 6th so a really good start.

This week we head off to Aston to step back up to Novice. A long way from Cornwall but have booked an Owen Moore lesson the day before and although we now have rain it is another venue that make huge efforts to mitigate any risks from hard ground. Last weekend we had some great training with BE trainer Sarah Thorne at Rosamond Green. A most fantastic facility with every type of combination and jump you could imagine. Really good to address some smaller basic problems before they catch us out. We were focusing on having her truly in front of the leg to the bridle.

So exciting to be able to finally plan, hoping that we can go to Hartpury 2 star this year eventing as well as mix in some showjumping. Looking forward to having Kensa to work with and hope she has some of her mothers talent (Sarnita took me to Advanced).

Image by Nick Perry