Next was Werribee Pony Club Horse Trials with Fonz and Trojan in the Grade 1 class and Queenie (the baby of the family) doing the grade 3. Trojan put in a solid effort in all 3 phases despite being his first one back at this level since having 6 months off due to a severe respiratory infection and Fonz was still suffering from “ranga-itis” in the dressage but was only a few points behind! They both had one fence down in the show jumping which was a good effort because the night time, full crowd atmosphere is quiet intense (even more-so than M3DE!) and does upset some horses and both jumped a double clear xc. However, the spread of marks in dressage was quiet bizarre (the winner was 200 points in front of the last place getter with 30 points between 1st and 2nd) so even with super jumping rounds the boys stayed in 7th and 8th. 

However Little Miss Queenie was a super star all weekend with a winning test and clear rounds to win her first Horse Trials. She won some yummy feed thanks to Prydes EasiFeed, a voucher thanks to Buckskin Jodphurs and a woollen quater sheet thanks to Piaffe. Hopefully this is the first of many successes to come for our little lady.

Avenal CNC was hopefully the biggest disaster I will have to deal with for some time! Everything that could go wrong did go wrong and the few things that wern't a complete mess were average at best. Perhaps we can laugh about it now!
The weekend before Avenal was spent at Boneo Park where both Fonz and Queenie led me into a false sense of secruitry with fantastic, CALM tests and clear jumping rounds to place 6th and 5th in the 1* and Prelim. During the week, our float sold which meant we had 3 horses entered without yards and a way to get them all there so we had 3 days to find a new float and book local stables.. This should have been SCRATCH sign one!
SCRATCH sign two could have been the realisation that we had misread the dates of Ben's Dad's Engagement Party and it was actually on the Saturday night and an unforeseen 2 minute change from top boots to high heels in the Flinder's St Maccas was in the stars for us..(Well, me - Ben wasn't exactly wearing heels)...This also necessitated a midnight XC walk with high powered torches that did give us a vague idea of the fences I would face in the morning however they didn't seem to detect the giant slippery cow patties that were EVERYWHERE) quiet as clearly.. I'll say no more.
1.00am we returned to the float .. and Trojan had not only ESCAPED from his brand new steel yards but destroyed these brand new yards and cut his leg open so he had to scratch.... (ironically he was the only one who behaved in the dressage with a 70% and a provisional 5th. So we were left with two dressage monsters (Queenie and Fonz) who bucked, bolted and practically did backflips  in their tests and were still in the bad books despite both jumping easy doublle clears on jumping day! I'd like to blame their cheeky behaviour on the aeroplanes that seem to always follow me down the centreline...but there is just something about Avenal. (DId I mention Fonz got time penalties because he refused to go in the start box for what seemed like forever for  the first time in 5 years of 1*.....Lucky a kind stranger came to our rescue and give the little sulk a lead through the box but no matter .. Maybe we'll leave "Fantapants"  at home next Avenal!

I have finally fully recovered from LAST YEAR’S Year 12 and have a full team
out eventing again as well a part time job at a pharmacy, lots of university
homework and a bit of pony club teaching on the side. Not a lot of time for
sleeping and eating…. 








Our season kicked off at Friends of Werribee CIC. Ironically, this was my first event wearing my new jumping vest and let’s just say it was worth the money. Fonz (Sea Student) was extremely excited and“Chestnut” at his first CIC in 12 months and this resulted in a very nice reinback (at nearly every marker...) and lots of nice travere (too bad it wasn’t in the test!) in his dressage test. You would think that his very “expressive” test would have relieved him of all early season “Fonzisms” however his attitude problem transferred over to cross country day and although I managed to win most of the arguments across the course a BIG disagreement at the second last fence (I said wait, he said ‘as if’) resulted in green joddies and a very sore (but not broken) rider. Who would have thought I would christen my new back protector at its very first event! I then bravely but perhaps not wisely jumped my Prelim horse (Trojan) to finish in 3rd, although I must admit I don’t remember a great deal of that course. I must have lost a few too many brain cells from my fall!