Soooo pleased with Lisselan Amazon today, for a horse that has never left the ground before she was very honest in her first jump schooling session. Rolled a few poles but never stopped at anything and built up to about 2'9" parallel poles to finish. I am sure Simon thought we were lying when we said she had never left the ground before, but both John and I asked Jenny Bidgood (her previous trainer) when we bought her and she said she hadn't. John double checked with her today to make sure, she was so good. She is such a brave and bold girl, Luke, her rider for the session reckoned the higher it went the better shape she made, he also mentioned the word 'chasing', we can but hope.
Shilpa, with Hannah on top had the benefit of a similar session which both horse and rider enjoyed. I really love to see both girls working together, they hacked up to the larger outdoor school which is a 10-15 minute ride away from Simon's yard both horses relaxed and riders chatting walking on the buckle, had a similar walk back home by which time the girls were nice and cool and ready to enjoy the rest of their day. Amazon, although the younger of the two gives Shilpa lots of confidence on the road, Shilps has really only worked in a string before coming to Simon's so all this hacking is quite new to her especially on her own. Simon uses the facilities of yards at either end of the village to him and often gets the horses hacking up on their own to warm up before they get to the gallops or the large outdoor school. The other morning they were going past people stopping at the village shop, children playing in the school playground and the general hurly burly of busy village life, without a care in the world, lots of people shouting hello to them as they went past.
John was in charge of the camera, hence the lack of good quality pictures for this post, he claims he was so entranced with what was going on he forgot to take any although he did get a few, we will put them up on epds-racing.co.uk shortly.
