Dan Williams’ RIHS vlog: ‘the heat took its toll on me’
Day three yesterday at the Royal International Horse Show was even hotter than days one and two!
I had my first ride of the week on my gorgeous heavyweight hunter, Blue Print. Big Baloo is owned by a good friend of mine who has kindly loaned him to me to show this season. Yesterday was only his fourth time out with me, so to say I’m delighted with how he coped is a huge understatement!
From 6am, when we got up, it was uncomfortably warm. We headed down to get Baloo fed, mucked out and ready. We were relieved to see that he was still gleaming, even without a rug (it seems everyone agreed with me yesterday that horses shouldn’t be wearing rugs in this heat!). That was, until he turned around! A quick bath later and I was able to crack on with plaiting up.
Once Baloo was plaited up and his quarter marks were on, we headed down to watch the middleweight hunters.
My lovely mum came to watch me, so once I found her, we watched the ride judge ride a few before heading down to get Baloo tacked up and worked in.
I was quite nervous going into the ring on Baloo as he’s done so little this season. He qualified with a win at Herts County, which was his first qualifier having only done one novice class a few weeks before. Baloo gave me an amazing gallop and behaved like a pro in the line up. In this heat, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
The heat took its toll on me after the class and I had to have a lie down in the shade with a fan on me for a few hours. I decided it was best to wait for it to cool down before travelling Baloo home. Once it was cool enough, we loaded Baloo up and he made the journey back to Hertfordshire, where he is being swapped over with my large riding horse, Broadshard Simplicity, AKA, Saucy.
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Continued below…
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Saucy was due to arrive shortly when I wrote this last night and I was up even earlier this morning to get him ready.
Check back to see my gorgeous Saucy strut his stuff in the ring! As long as it cools down by a few thousand degrees, I’ll have lots of video footage of the day’s classes.
Dan
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Dan runs a livery yard in Hertfordshire and has been focusing seriously on showing for the past five years. He has ridden since childhood, in all disciplines, but when he found showing he ‘really caught the bug’ and knew that it was what he wanted to do.