Lauren Shannon’s eventing blog: life’s never dull with a bunch of mares
The eventing season is well and truly underway now, and it’s lovely to see everyone out and enjoying it in the sunshine. I cannot wait to get my own horses out competing next month, but that hasn’t stopped me already making journeys to events with students and their horses. Everyone seems to have had a brilliant start to the 2014 season, and long may that continue!
I, on the other hand, have been competing in more arena eventing classes this last week. My student Bex and I headed to Weston Lawns Equestrian Centre on Sunday, where I won the novice class on As You Will, and Bex came a brilliant fourth in the BE100, which was only her second competition on new horse, Crispy.
In the past week the mares have also had dressage and jumping lessons, so we are feeling tuned up and ready for some events now. We did have to laugh at Purdey (Quality Purdey) when she started her dressage lesson though. She left us in no doubt that we had upset her routine when she had to be the second horse to have a lesson rather than the first.
Her owner Claire Poole couldn’t get to us to watch her in time for the first lesson, and Purdey is normally always the first off the truck. We tried to assuage her by giving her a walk around when we arrived, and this seemed to work. However, when I got on her for her lesson she proceeded to turn herself inside out, squealing and bucking around the school. It was slightly frightening, but after a few minutes she calmed down and worked brilliantly. It is, after all, never dull with a bunch of mares!
The work on our new yard here at home is still progressing quickly. The sand for the school has now arrived and we will put down the Clopf fibre from Martin Collins this week. It makes a huge difference seeing the school with a surface, and we should be riding on it next week! Our new walker from Claydon will be arriving in just over a week too, so then we should have something that looks like a new yard in front of us. Exciting times for the Shannon Eventing team…
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.