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Mark winning the Novice One Day Event at Streetlam in May 2009 on Harley.
Mark writes:
After a nine year lay-off from riding due to an accident resulting in
a broken back, I decided to get back into riding as I do not make a
very patient spectator.
Harley, a nine year old Belgian Warmblood was bought in 2006 after my
wife Lindsey, saw an advert in the Horse and Hound for a quiet and
laid back horse. He had spent most of his life doing BSJA since being
imported from Belgium as a six year old. I duly registered him after
a few promising lessons from Ian although due to his previous
experience we were limited to Amateur classes which there are not a
lot of.
It was also discovered that he really wasn't the quiet, laid back
character that I was lead to believe he was - in the first week I had
him I was thrown off three times due to his "sense of humour" and very
nearly re-sold him. He has a tendency to fly-buck when excited or
bored - the very first show jumping competition I took him to was at
Richmond. He won the class but proceeded to throw me off in the
presentation. It got to the stage at Northallerton that if he ever
won a prize then Janet refused to present it.
It certainly re-taught me my sense of balance and now I am used to him
he seems to have got bored with this and very rarely does it. We
weren't very successful show jumping which I put down to him not
enjoying it and so I started doing some dressage that Lindsey was more
interested in. He actually quite enjoys it and this is what I
concentrate on these days, although I still find the time to vary his
routine with some unaffiliated show jumping, hunter trials and the odd
ODE (he won the novice class at Streatlam earlier this year) although
this is all somewhat different to the team chasing I did in my late
teens.
With regular lessons from Ian and visits from Paul Hayler he is
improving all the time and is now competing in Novice and Elementary
at British Dressage.
Mark.
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