Lauren Shannon’s eventing blog: thank me for the weather
I think the collective horse community needs to offer their thanks to me — for as soon as I put off the start of my season by a month, the rain stops!
The ground is looking good at a lot of venues now, so hopefully this will continue and everyone can get out and enjoy some competing. I am going to ignore the fact that snow is forecast in many areas through the end of this week.
Last weekend, we took a lorry load of horses out to Weston Lawns Equestrian Centre to do some eventing without the grass bit. We took 4 horses for me to ride, and a couple of my students came along too.
The weather helped and hindered during the day — it stayed dry, which was lovely, but the wind was horrible all day long. While the babies who went in the BE100 class went beautifully (I even managed a win!), the mares doing the intermediate class later in the day did not appreciate having to stand around in it.
They all were very fresh in both their dressage and jumping rounds, with me having to treat each test as a schooling session and pop in an extra halt or circle here and there! Crunchie managed to hold it together the most out of all of them to finish a credible 5th, but we definitely left feeling the day was more about surviving than education! Hey ho, that was technically our first outing of the year so taken with a pinch of salt it was a very good day.
Here at home the work on our new yard is progressing ever faster. The concrete pad for the barn is finished (see picture top) — I never knew concrete could be so exciting to see — and as I speak the concrete for our new Claydon horse walker is being poured.
Our arena will be finished at the end of next week, as long as snow doesn’t get in the way. I cannot wait to have a ride around it, might have to crack open a bottle of bubbly when we do!
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Lauren
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Event rider Lauren Shannon blogged on Horseandhound.co.uk from June 2011 until September 2014. Born in Brighton, she lived in America from the age of three to 16, returning to the UK to go to university after she finished school. After university she worked for Mark and Tanya Kyle before setting up her own yard in Leicestershire. Her best result to date was finishing 9th at the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials with her top horse, Zero Flight.