Today Jasper and I headed off to Lyvers Farm near Salisbury for a ODE run by the WHHC. After 3 seasons of pretty much exclusively doing Nationals taking a step back down to club level was rather weird and for me remembering everything in 1 day was very challenging (must be getting old!). I had another chance to practice the test I am doing this season and we had a great score of 50.04 with just one ball down in the cones. This was slightly frustrating as Jasper and I were cantering along nicely from 6 when suddenly Jasper panicked and shot off in the opposite direction. I then had cone 7 down as a result and put it down to just Jasper spooking at nothing. Later however talking to other competitors lots of them had had the same thing happen and it turns out there was a steward hiding in the trees! Had to let Jasper off then and praise him for his bravery facing the scary man in the hedge. The marathon was challenging due to the heat but the countryside was lovely and Jasper did some lovely obstacles today to enable us to keep our first place with the best marathon to win the Open Class.