Ups and Down aka ponies are great levelers!

Well just a quick catch up from last weekend. Friday night after work saw me bathing 2 ponies in preperation for Otley show. For a change the ponies were Pait and Duke. Pait was straight forward to bath even if it involves a lot of scrubbing to lessen the almost permanent stains on her flanks! Then my next one to do was Duke who we had collected from the field and brought to the yard via the horsebox. He was a tad on his toes to say the least and bathing was like trying to jet wash a spinning top but we did manage it in the end. Queen Bex got cermoniously dumped out over night and Duke had his first night in a stable.
Next morning was an early start as classes started at 8.30 and Pait was third class in. Unusually it was ridden in the morning and inhand in the afternoon, the secretary nicely informed us that ridden classes were also being stripped so that meant I had to put my inhand gear on and groom. Pait was brill but babyish. Em said he was hard work and that she wasn't going forward but it looked fine the only blips were a wrong leg in her individual but she pulled in 4th place which I was really proud of. Had a bit of a wonder round the ahowground until our inhand class. Em had Pait and I had Duke for this and Duke had decided Pait was bestest friend ever and couldn't be seperated so we cried and danced around a bit in the line up. Neither got placed but it was only Duke's second time out anywhere and he didn't lose the plot/ rear or annihilate any other horses so I counted it as a major win.
Sunday was our local hunter trial and I decided to take Rory and enter the 60cm. I hacked down and he warmed up well and flew round the course. First few jumps were slightly hesitant but by the end I was checking back out of gallop a few strides out of each fence! Sadly Rory majorly blotted the copybook when I went to hack home and ended up giving me a meeting with the tarmac just before I got back to the field. So he went from superstar to dog food.

Keep meaning and forgetting to type this up!
So this is nearly a fortnight late opps so much for my record keeping. 19th April Em and I had decided to do a sponsored treasure hunt ride for charity. One of the point being it was optional fancy dress and I could let me inner child loose. Initially I wanted to go as a wraith from Lord of the rings- black pony ideal costume but Em wanted to go as a theme and I didn't think a blue roan went with wraith very well so it was back to the drawing board for ideas until inspiration struck- MY LITTLE PONIES! so a few very sad and silly evenings on messenger between Em and myself and we had come up with costume ideas.
Decided to get ready at the showfield so both ponies got spray painted and glittered. It was a fab ride and both went really well even with a couple of girls constantly cantering past up getting behind and reovertaking which is Rory's huge weakness as he spins to face or threatens to bolt none of which is fun but he did settle and ignore them. Pait saw motorbikes for the first time whilst being ridden and both were happy to stop, start whilst we wrote clues down.