What an improvement from last week! I thought we were going to have to start from scratch again after the winter with working on Jaspers medium trot. But today he was actually doing it which was amazing. Great lesson, very pleased with him :) thank you Jude for your help, it was a great lesson and I wasn't as exhausted afterwards this time. Was hacking Jasper home when we rode past the postman. He is clearly new around here as he looked mildly alarmed to see someone riding a horse and was the...
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Had my first dressage lesson with Jasper today for the first time in ages. He was an absolute star and was really trying with his lengthened strides which he seems to have forgotten how to do over the winter... Lots to work on as always but hopefully some progress is being made too.

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Jaspers home from Judes today, who tells me he has been a very good boy. I went to see him yesterday when our farrier Jerry came to shoe him for Austria and kindly gave me a spare set of shoes for him. Tonight was my Leavers Ball so I was busy getting ready for that so thank you to Jude for having Jasper and to my Mum and Dad who went and picked him up for me. I had a fabulous night and my feet are absolutely killing me! It was great to see all my friends and get all dressed up for once.

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Today has been crazily busy with more preparation for Austria. Despite having about 6 hours sleep out of the last 72 hours I was up at the crack of dawn to take my sister to school (yup my family enjoys a luxurious chauffeur service provided by moi). I am not a morning person anyway so dragging myself out of bed was tough.

My mum and I were then off to see our friend who is printing the GB teams lorry stickers for Austria to okay the trial one she has done. It looks brilliant and it was so wei...
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Had another great days training today with James Rooney but a driven one this time. We loaded the trailer back up and drove down to Anns yard. I had my lesson first working on the dressage test I will be doing in Austria. Jasper went brilliantly today, really pleased with him, going in a lovely rounded outline and really trying his best with his medium trot.
The picture is of us warming up so his outline is not as nice there but mum forgot to take any more pictures!
After behaving so well all w...

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Spent a fabulous day in Hampshire today training with Caroline Douglas in preparation for Austria.
Jasper was great and showed huge improvement throughout the day so I was really pleased with him. I got loads out of my lesson and I am glad we did as I feel so much more postive about Austria now. Big thanks to Caroline for a great lesson and for her generous hospitality. The icing on the cake is that today the weather has been brilliant, sunshine never fails to lift my mood.
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Today has been a great days training at Fenix Carriages in Devon, with two different groups running alongside each other. One group was trained by Wilf Bowman-Ripley who is a team trainer as this group is headed to Austria and the other group consisting of BYD South West members was trained by Mark Broadbent.
My best friend Ann, who I am traveling out to Austria with as she is on the JWT team stayed round mine Friday night and we were up all night messing about painting our nails with Union J...
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Today we are leaving for the British Young Drivers Easter Clinic held at the Unicorn Trust, Stow-on-the-wold in Gloucestershire. This year for the first time the camp is being split into the National Young Drivers and those competing at Club level and below. The NYD's are arriving today and we finish Tuesday morning. Everyone else arrives Monday lunchtime and finishes Thursday afternoon. I am going to stay on and help at the rest of the camp until Wednesday afternoon.
It seems like we have on...
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Been a lovely sunny weekend so been driving Sarah and then after dropping my sister off at work and running to Tescos we were rushing around back home hitching the trailer on and driving to my instructer Judes yard just up the road to pick Jasper up from his week of schooling with her. What an improvement! Ok hes still not Totalis but he is much better then he was! I love riding him after Jude, its like hes been tuned up. Very glad to have him home. But him being home is also a complete pain ...

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