Ira and I had a fantastic first show together at the Total Industrial Solutions / Ewen Cameron Drilling Ltd Bay of Plenty Premier League Championship Show. I couldn't have asked any more of this gorgeous boy, and I'm so proud of Ira and my whole team for getting us through it all so well!

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Once I'd made the decision to sell Tech, we started my new unicorn hunt. At no stage did I ever think this was going to be easy... We were looking for a horse that ticked all of my "essential" boxes: Sensible, Good walk, Easy to handle on the ground, 16-16.2hh, Wide build, Dressage training/experience, Located in the North Island, Within my (relatively small!) budget, and the owner willing to let me have the horse on trial at my property.

Over the course of the next 12 months I had a few different horses on trial who weren't quite right, had amazing friends lend me their horses so I could keep riding and keep my fitness/strength up while horse-less, and bought a mare that unfortunately didn't work out so had to sell her.

At this point I thought I was never going to find a horse, and was seriously second-guessing my decision to sell Tech. But then in early May Rosie responded to ANOTHER "unicorn-hunt" post that Jody put out on Facebook, and offered us to try her gelding... all 16.3hh of him!!

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This is a post I never thought I would be writing... In May 2018 after an up and down competition season, Tech was giving me very subtle signs that he was over life as my para dressage horse. I kept this feeling to myself for a while but slowly started getting the girls to do more fun stuff with him - more hacking, some cowboy challenge stuff and some jumping (including some pony club rounds). He was in his element! As upsetting as it was, in my heart I knew that I needed to let him go and have some fun, free of the responsibility of looking after me on his back - a job which he'd done so amazingly for over 7 years. I just don't have the funds or the time to have two horses in work, and Tech certainly wasn't ready for retirement so I reluctantly put him up for sale in search of the PERFECT home...
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2017 was an unlucky one for me, with the first of five falls over the next 12 months (off my own feet - not off a horse!) that resulted in what I now know as major concussions. As a typical stoic horserider, each time I fell over I didn't think much of it, despite my poor face taking the brunt of the fall because my arms are too weak to stop me going down. I amassed a fair few facial bumps and bruises, with the worst being in May 2017 when I fell over on my front doorstep and broke my nose and tore my calf after crashing down on the concrete!

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Ok I hold my hands up - I've been a little bit (ok, very!) slack at updating my site over the last 18 months but I'm rectifying that now! I have lots of changes and news to share so watch this space!

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Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year Break! Team Tech managed to squeeze in a few lessons with Jody and Julie so our training was ticking along nicely and we were gearing up well for our first ever visit to Auckland Manukau Dressage Group in a few weeks time. I've always wanted to get up to Clevedon for the annual Dressage Festival and this year I was lucky enough to be able to pull a crew together to make it happen. So on Thursday we loaded up and set off for Auckland for the Shirley Watts Memorial Cushionride Dressage Festival.

The weather forecast wasn't looking particularly great with string winds predicted, but we didn't let that deter us, and we were soon parked up at Clevedon Showgrounds with Tech settled in his pen, and the tent ready to go up. Unfortunately that wasn't such an easy mission due to the aforementioned wind... even with 4 pairs of hands (ok my pair of hands aren't 100% helpful but hey!) the crazy wind managed to rip out one of the pegs and peeled back the flysheet that Mum and Chelsea were frantically trying to get pegged down! Poor Chels took the full force of the peg to the forehead and now has a dent in her head to remind her of that wonderful experience - sorry Chels!! She refused the Mickey Mouse plaster I offered her though... hehe!! ;)

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Super proud of Techy and my fantastic crew today! We rode two tests at the Tauranga Dressage show for the first time, and despite being absolutely shattered afterwards, it was totally worth it to win both classes with 71% scores yahooo!!! Such a good cow pony!

Becky did an awesome job on the warm up and Tech felt free, forward and attentive which really helped as I was riding for longer than usual so didn't have the energy in reserve to work harder than usual haha!

Huge thanks as always to my amazing team for looking after both me and my cow pony like princesses :) love you guys! xxx

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Without any time for a breather after Equidays, we were back to washing, packing, loading Tech up and heading to Taupo for North Island Champs on Friday! 

Day one was our Championship test, and I was running with a bit of a shortage on crew this show, which meant the fabulous Chelsea and Taya were tag-teaming getting Tech washed, plaited and tacked up, and also helping me get me ready to go too - no mean feat in itself!! 

I didn't have chance to check out where our warm up and arena was before we were ready to go, and once Jody was on board and heading to the warm up, we all realised how far away it was from the mounting block - eek! So while Jody was warming Tech up, Chelsea and I were running (well I was full-speed wheelchairing!) around trying to find a mounting block to take over to the warm up area. My amazing mounting block from GFab was at home in my garage because we're working on the bracket for my float to transport it, so I was a bit stuck! Thankfully, Aimee let me borrow her metal step, so with 10 minutes to go before my test time, Chelsea was pushing a wheelbarrow across the grounds full up with Aimee's step and my steps from the float, and I was following as fast as I could behind hoping it would be high enough to get me up onto Tech! Not the best preparation for our first test oops!

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We were lucky enough to be part of the Para Equestrian demonstrations on all three days of Equidays, under the guidance of the brilliant Julie Malcolm and Jody Hartstone, my amazing coaching team!

We were staying in "luxury" this time, with Chelsea towing our caravan over while I towed Tech! We arrived on Thursday lunchtime, set up camp Thorne and the Becky had a ride on Tech. He was rather excited by all the goings-on and Becky had to work hard to get his focus and get him working nicely! Then it was bathtime for Techy and Bex and Chelsea worked hard to get him gleaming white with the not-so-great hoses that stopped running if you held them up too high hehe!

We were scheduled to take part in all three demos, so after a spot of shopping and catching up with some of my amazing sponsors who had stands at the show on Friday morning, it was time to tack up and Bex jumped on for a quick warm up before we headed down to the demo arena.

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We had a clicker training lesson a few weeks ago and I wanted to try something new - getting Tech to lift his feet up for me from my wheelchair. I'd never done this before, but the girls have been consistently tapping his leg before lifting his foot up over the last little while, so all I had to do was mark the good behaviour (aka the lift) when I tapped his leg, and Mum who was stood at his head gave him his Big Red's Cookie reward!

Have a look at the video below - this was our 2nd, 3rd ad 4th attempts and I think we did pretty well! Now to work on him holding it up on his own and then working out how I can get my arms down there to pick them out! Baby steps... ;)

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