May has been a quiet month on the competition front, Prince and I wont be going out again until the International competition in July at Hartpury, so we have been quietly working on training and winding down ahead of Leonie’s wedding and our holiday at the start of June.
During periods like this we take the opportunity to schedule in things like arranging for Princes passport to be sent off to be covered with an FEI passport, while he wont be travelling away from the yard as this will be needed to compete at International level, even though we aren’t leaving the country. However we had to get the diagram page completed and signed by our vet first, which didn’t take too long seeing as he is all black, and he also had his vaccinations done during this time as you never know if they may react if you have it done too close to competition, causing you to withdraw. For those of you who may not know, under FEI rules the horses have to have their vaccinations given every 6 months as opposed to the normal 12 monthly program in order to be eligible to compete.
The other big thing on our agenda was to get our saddle checked, again which we like to do out of competition season, we have learned in the past with Bongo how a change in the saddle could affect his performance so its not something we tend to do when we are in the middle of competition even though Prince isn’t so sensitive to change. Jo Beavis who is our lovely sponsor from the National Saddle Centre came out at the start of the month, straight after our last competition, and was a good job too as there was too much movement in the tree, so Jo had no choice but to send it back to the manufacturer for a complete tree replacement. The turn around for this type of work can be several weeks, so I wont be getting it back until mid June, so you can see what a predicament I could have been in if it was mid competition season. Luckily Jo is so fabulous that she was able to loan us a saddle identical to ours while mine is off being done, something she has done for me on several occasions perhaps if I’ve had a new horse until we get a saddle sorted, I feel so lucky to have had Jo on my team as a sponsor as she has worked with me since I was about 10 years old, so really has watched me grow, and means she knows what I like/dislike and totally understands my difficulties and my needs as she has watched me ride so much, which I think is really important to have when you are spending so much money on such an important piece of equipment.
