Tails From Provence

Beware the Ides of February

I’ve just realised that February is a bad month for my health.

Three years ago, I had the broken wrist to contend with.

Two years ago – well I was fine, but poor little Cinnamon was operated on for cysts on her side and on her leg. Which made me sad, of course.

Last year, I looked like this :

And this year I had an injured back/mystery illness which laid me low for nearly three weeks.

Next year I will hibernate for all of February. It’s probably safest.

I first heard of online dressage competitions six or seven years ago. It come up for discussion amongst my Irish dressage friends, some of whom are judges, as people wondered how an online competition might affect our regular dressage competitions, as well as how the judging worked. The site under discussion at the time was dressageanywhere.com, which runs British Dressage and FEI tests and is quite a serious, dressage only site.

Within the last year or two, I came across interdressage.com, via fellow blogger Helen of Skyfaxa. It looked a bit more light-hearted and varied than dressageanywhere, but I wasn’t tempted to participate at the time. Then in January this year, I felt I needed some motivation, so I decided to enter Aero in one of their competitions. Some of my followers, here and on Facebook, followed the process with interest.

So now, folks, I am wondering – how many of you would like to attend the Interdressage April show with me?

There are loads of different classes, for all levels, and there is something to suit all styles of English riding. Western riders could perhaps do the showing or Practical Horsemanship tests if any of them are keen to take part?

Straightforward dressage tests

Baroque dressage tests, ridden and in-hand

Equitation and Turnout (showing, methinks)

Equitation Jumping (show off your style between and over fences)

Golden Oldie/Promising Youngster – ridden and in-hand showing

Practical Horsemanship – handling test

There are prize money, rosettes and certificates on offer to the victors, but it’s not about winning, it’s about F-U-N!

To find out more, visit the Interdressage site and check out the April schedule. If you’re in, let me know. If a few of us want to have a go, we can treat it just like a real, local show that we’re going to attend together. We chat about what class or classes we will enter on our blogs, on Facebook or on Twitter; we watch each others’ rides once our videos are uploaded and chat about them too; and then wait together with bated breath for our results. There’s even a virtual Interdressage bar on Facebook if we want to hang out with other competitors. We could even come up with our own hashtag!

PS : Just to be clear – I have no connection with Interdressage. It’s just that I had a good experience with them and I wanna share the love!

Tags: interdressage, online horse show

More butts. I finally get mine back in the saddle

The last last time I rode was February 19th. I rode Aero for about half an hour. I had been doing yoga twice a week and I felt great riding him – straight, balanced and strong. YES!

The next day, I made the video to enter the Practical Horsemanship class on the Interdressage site. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll remember that I put my back out just before we started. It felt like a normal back ‘twang’ but the next day I was in a lot of pain, both in my lower abdomen and in my back. It got worse instead of better. Fearing a kidney infection, I went to the Doctor (when I finally found one who wasn’t on holiday. French medics don’t seem to believe in locums. ’nuff said). I’m not going to go into all the boring details, but I’ve had an unpleasant couple of weeks. I’ve had several tests and investigations and nothing has showed up. Which is good, right? But ultimately frustrating when I still have pain and no explanation.

The weather has been just lovely. I really wanted to ride. Today was the day. Even though I’m not quite right, I was determined to get my ass back in the saddle.

But first, I had a very muddy cob to groom.

Doesn’t look too bad, right?

But the mud is Flurry coloured so you don’t see the clods until you go in close…

Sigh.

I didn’t ride for very long – fifteen minutes, maybe. But I felt ok. Hopefully I’ll do more tomorrow.

And Aero’s cough? He hasn’t coughed since we started soaking his hay – hooray! Our normal vet finally got here today, too. Current thinking is that it is indeed a dust allergy. I’m to continue soaking his hay and MAYBE, just maybe, try him on the new season hay when it’s ready.

So we have several months of hay-soaking ahead of us. Worse still, Aero can’t stay where he is on his own, so he will have to go back to the big paddock with Flurry. Which means I will also have to soak Flurry’s hay, otherwise there is a chance that Aero will eat it. Back to Pain-in-the-Butt territory.

But I’m not going to be all Doom-and-Gloomy, I have some of super-exciting things coming up on the blog! I can’t wait to start telling you all about them, but I have to keep quiet for another little while!

While you’re waiting for the Grand Exposé, could you head over to my Facebook page and give me and the Boys an ould like? If you haven’t already done so, of course. I put a plea out for new followers last week, hoping to break the 100 follower mark and I blasted through it. Currently at 160 and hoping to break the 200 mark soon! Help me –

G’wan, like our page! It might be worth your while…