worldofshowjumping.com

The sound of rain on the roof of the truck at 6am never really inspires me to get up so after four snoozes I finally managed to make it to the stables for 6.30am.  All the boys were hungry and definitely let me know about it! After doing the normal stable duties it was time for hand walking.  Luckily the sun had come out and the show is in the grounds of the university so is in a really nice setting. Just outside of the stable area there is lovely walkways edged in wood chip which is perfectly designed for safe hand walking, not so sure if the university designed this for horses but it works great for us! Marco came to ride Cash at 9am so then I quickly plaited and made ready Porter for his 10 o'clock class. Porter jumped a lovely clear again today so is now qualified for the youngster final tomorrow evening.

Our early morning hand walking around the park was like the quiet before the storm as after Porter had jumped Marco directly rode CC.  Whilst he was riding it was time for me to try and contain Spartis mane.  Sparti is a bit of an elephant in size but has a mane like a lion! With no time for plaits lots of bunches were needed to at least keep it on one side!  Luckily at this show there are food stands right next to the warm up arena so when Marco was up on Sparti I was able to get some food on the go! In the warm up Sparti was jumping super but in the ring all did not go to plan.  Sparti was jumping the medium tour class today but decided that today he was a bit scared and had the back bar of number one down but was then clear the rest of the way around, oh well tomorrow is another day and Sparti is still a very handsome boy!

After Sparti had had a nice shower it was time to prepare Cash for jumping in the same class as Sparti, luckily there was 103 in the class so there was plenty of time between the two boys.  I got on Cashi, nice and early before Marco started to ride him, to walk him around the paddock on nice long reins which he really enjoys.  Cashi jumped a nice training round for just 1 time fault.  It's super now to have Cash back with on the show after a long break through the summer, and he's jumping as good as ever and definitely showing the younger boys what to do!  After Cash had finished jumping and was washed it was a very quick turnaround to make CC ready for the big tour class.  CC was jumping really good today and was really quick but unfortunately had the last fence down which was a water tray under a vertical.  Maybe he thought there were some aliens under there somewhere as he's usually quite good at spotting these things lurking in random places.  Oh well not our day for winning today but all the boys were well behaved so treats all around!

So at 6 o'clock it was time to start to groom, walk and do the stables, obviously after the boys had eaten as they were famished after there hard days work!  Whilst walking Sparti we both noticed about 20 hot air balloons in the sky above Munster which looked really beautiful, although I would never go up in one after googling 'hot air balloons' with Katta!  So today was my day to be the last one finished but luckily team DZ bank were there to save the day, Nanna, Henricks groom brought refreshments, of my favourite kind! And Katta, Ludgers groom helped with the tack cleaning so we were all finished in the stables for 8.30.  This meant that tonight we were able to all go out for dinner in the city where we found a super cute restaurant which served 'Hugo' and really nice food!  This makes the long days much more enjoyable! Now night check is done and the boys are resting well, 2 already fast asleep in there beds!

Bet wishes Terri