Messed about timeline

I've written about different things at different times because to keep to one timeline would be difficult and things happen that I want to make note of.

Since I'm inspired by showing, I'll jot a bit of that down - and how I wish I could go back and do it again!!

By the time I was 11 I'd grown into Frankie a little bit. We did local shows, we show jumped, dressaged, did cross country, although the battering my nerves had taken from experiences with Ollie took another year or so to be healed. Taking Frankie cross country was a dream. I took he and Ollie to Brettanby, our local Hunt's hunter trial. This had been my first ever away from home event when I first got Ollie and it lasted 3 fences, before the first water crossing and elimination.

Coming back brought some memories but since Ollie was now a water pro, I wasn't worried. He was entered in the triers at around 85cms and Frankie in the open at around 95cms.

I knew the course well, having schooled there before and although it had been reversed, my ride on Ollie went brilliantly. He flew round, I was riding him in a short cheek hackamore at this point, but our relationship was excellent and I could just give him his head. We finished in something like two minutes under optimum time which meant no chance of a result! But I didn't care. Ollie had made it. He'd gone from being grumpy, withdrawn, misunderstood and slow to happy, outgoing, supported and FAST!

With him finished, I cooled him down and handed him over to Mum, swapping over to Frankie for the open. I put in his studs and overgirth - yeah, all the gear! - and started warming him up. Nothing really fazed him, even at 6. He was alert to everything, but always controllable. I'd walked the course, which incorporated a wooded section - very twisty and turny - that had a treble of elephant traps set on odd distances. They were probably my scariest fence, but approaching them on Frankie, with my mind screaming 'they're huge! surely not! i can't even see the next one!' he was bold enough to take a stride out at the first, then head for the next which was to the right, round a treestump, leap that, and then to the last, which was left and diagonal, and flew over that too. At that moment in our relationship I knew I could trust this horse with anything. What an alien feeling!

The memory that sticks in my mind most was a qualifier for working hunter where fence 8 was a bullfinch, around 5 foot high, which I could not see over on the course walk. The idea was the horses brush through the top, like a chaser fence. That idea to me was a nauseating one. Frankie didn't know to do that! He'd just see a solid wall of brush! We'd got round the course with a couple of poles down up to then, so we weren't in the running. I harboured no hope of a rosette but barrelling down to this hedge, I have never had such a feeling of 'not gonna make it!' as this. Now, that's meant to transmit to your horse, right?

Not Frankie. He went for it. Tried to clear the brush but ended up going through the top as he was meant to. We had one stop at a large stile, but maybe my negativity had seeped through by then, Frankie thinking 'jeez, I've just taken her over that hedge, what more does she need me to do?!' It was a harrowing experience but we managed a 4th place as 23 out of 28 people were eventually eliminated in the class, the course was that grim!