Zoe and Foxy At The Royal Welsh Show

Meet Foxy she’s a 3 year old Warmblood x Welsh mare. I’ve owned her for over a year now and I suppose she is what you would call an impulse buy (though rather an expensive one I will admit) as I didn’t set out to buy a horse when I got her even though she is exactly the type of horse I've always wanted.

Being so young I wasn’t able to start breaking her in until this year so we tried our luck at some local level inhand showing with great success getting many wins and championship placings. When it came to breaking her in I had afew setbacks finding a saddle that fitted, Being quite a chunky horse normal saddles slipped round her belly with the slightest movement and doing it without one wasn’t an option I discovered when I kept bouncing straight off her back (a problem Foxy quickly learnt she could take full advantage of meaning I spent more time bouncing off then staying on!) though 

I eventually managed to find one designed specifically for horses of her build and after one more failed attempt at bouncing me off she took to her work like a pro progressing so quickly she is now backed, walking and trotting and getting better everyday but I’ll talk more about that another time. She is still competing this year and our big aim was the Royal Welsh show which we attended on Monday 23rd July. We went there with low expectations knowing the standard would be very high and not knowing how she would behave after her last show a few weeks before where she disgraced herself misbehaving in both her classes, She has quite a feisty attitude when she wants to!

We arrived Sunday night and after a mishap with a broken stable door got her settled in for the night. 5.30am Monday morning we went for a walk around the warm up arena by her ring to give her chance to take in the atmosphere. she had never been to anything that big before and I was expecting fireworks from her when she saw all the tents and everything else but I was pleasantly surprised by how easily she accepted it all only getting a little bit wound up near the end (though I think she was showing off for the Shetland pony stallion that turned up to share the warm-up with her after a while).

By 8.30am she was in the ring with the 14 others in her class and I could hardly watch expecting her to show her feisty side at any minute but it seems she set out to prove me wrong because she was perfectly behaved and got an amazing 4th place! I couldn’t have been more proud!!

She spent the rest of the day relaxing in her stable being thoroughly spoilt (I apologize to whoever had stable 502 after us because of the big hole she thought it would be fun to dig complete with water from her water bucket in front of the stable door! maybe she thought someone would steal her now she’s a big prize winner so decided to protect herself with a moat who knows? strange horse)

After such a huge success everyone is expecting big things from her next year when she starts her ridden competitive career though I think it might be a few years till we are back at the Royal Welsh, though again she might surprise me! I’ll keep you posted…

Zoe and Foxy

I Went To The Olympics

I apologise if you're sick of the olympics, but I'm really excited about them and watching as much as I can every evening, so please bear with me. I'm particularly thrilled with the olympics, because I actually got to see a live olympic event, which was amazing.

I'd tried to get tickets in every round for the ballot and failed. I wanted to go and see the cross country phase of the three day eventing at Greenwich, but I guess every other horse mad girl in the country did as well. Needless to say I was unsuccessful.

Eventually in the final free-for-all, I got tickets. To what? Beach Volleyball. Why? Well it came down to a straight choice between beach volleyball and canoeing, because we had a limited number of days we could have go. We decided that it would be more fun to go and see something in the centre of London than out in the countryside, so we chose beach volleyball (a sport I knew next to nothing about).

We drove to London on Saturday morning, listening to the cycling road race – poor Mark Cavendish, I was so hoping he would win. Checking into our hotel, we used the nine zone travel card which came with the tickets to see a little bit of London. One of the cultural events was the creation of a scale model of Stonehenge as a bouncy castle and last weekend it was in a London park. I went, I saw, I bounced – it was great fun.

We caught the tube back to central London and walked down the Mall. That was a terrific view – olympic and union flags lining the Mall down to Buckingham Palace, where the cycling road race had finished just a few hours before. 

The beach volleyball stadium was build in 30 days flat in Horseguards Parade; where they troop the colour. It seemed to be made entirely out of very thin scaffolding, but had great views and surprisingly comfortable seats! We and thousands of other people went through the very slick airport type security – bag x rays, metal detectors etc in about 10 minutes and into the holding park.

The atmosphere was fantastic – everyone else there seemed to know as little about beach volleyball as we did, but there was a very helpful explanation from a commentator at the start. We watched four games; two mens and two ladies , with music booming, a compere geeing the crowd up every so often and a troupe of dancers coming out in any gaps or dull moments.

By luck, we had a match between Australia and USA ladies (both medal winning teams in the past), who were incredibly skilled, with some amazing rallies.

Night fell and you could see the London Eye over the top of the buildings. It looked fantastic.

There were some empty seats in the olympic officials area, but most of the stadium was packed (except when people were in the queue for the bar or food). Everyone there was having a great time and in the same way as the great six nations games, there were fans of every nationality sitting side by side. It was a fantastic day and a truly memorable experience. 

Well done Great Britain. I think we can be really proud.