HOWICK

It was our first trip to Howick but it certainly won’t be our last – such a nice event really well located just over the severn bridge with great tracks and a very relaxed atmosphere.

CLASS SPEC (Specs) and MONBEG ALCATRAZ (Dave) were both competing in their first BE100 and VIVENDI DE VARDAG (Viva) was in the NOV.

Viva performed a very accurate and obedient test so we were quite disappointed with her mark of 34, but she made up for it with two lovely jumping performances to finish just outside the top 10. She is such a consistent performer so I will be very sad to soon be handing the reins over to her owner Helena, but equally excited to see how they get on together!

Specs behaved very well on the flat with just a couple of small mistakes to score a competitive mark of 30. He then jumped a beautiful double clear making the step up really easily to finish on 3rd place. Somehow I managed to pick up 0.8 time faults for going too fast! (!) a real rarity for me but he covers the ground so well and seemed to enjoy himself!

Dave had a really fun time throwing some serious shapes in the dressage warm up which left me clinging on, but he managed to contain him self really well in the arena to score 32 despite a number of small green mistakes. He too jumped a lovely (if a little exuberant) clear SJ and gave me the most amazing few XC just oozing confidence and class. Unfortunately we had a drive by at a skinny going into the water which marred an otherwise perfect round but he definitely feels like one for the future which is very exciting.