2020 has started with a bang! We survived storm Ciara and storm Dennis relatively unscathed, spring was just making life easier, then Coronavirus hit….
Obviously life as we know it has now changed considerably for the meantime, but I count myself lucky to be able to get out to care for, and safely exercise the horses with help from a fabulous team of staff. Being a relatively small livery yard with three separate barns, we have been able to allow all owners access to the yard to look after their horses whilst social distancing and providing hand washing and sanitising facilities. Sadly we cannot welcome any visitors at present and I have asked the liveries to ride as safely as possible and not to jump. I am grateful to everyone for keeping to the rules and allowing life to remain relatively normal at CHD. The horses all seem settled and are enjoying the spring grass! With spring around the corner and our new grazing growing fast, we hope to soon have some spaces for additional liveries, with stabling available in our newly refurbished barn. Mark has been working on my new office, recycling our pallets to make a cosy place to keep up with the admin. Once we are out of lockdown, we will be running small equi-pilates sessions at CHD with Sally Wells in our heated barn. With competitions now on lockdown, luckily Mav and I had the opportunity to get out earlier in the year and went to a BD show at Cherwell where he achieved 70% in the medium 73 and 69.12% in the advanced medium. I have had more opportunity in the winter months to work with my youngster Freya and am delighted with her progress. As she is getting stronger I have been able to work on her leg-yields in trot and she is started to get more confident with short amounts shoulder-in. Current clients have had many recent successes in the last few months including Katie Richards and Riesenstern who have competed in their first Grand Prix, Owen Cooper who has competed in his first Inter II on Don Dante and Charlotte Rudge who was 8th in a large Prelim class at the BD Regional Championships and was the youngest participant. Polly Tompkins and Sarah Taylor have had great success with wins in BD Quest classes and my own Sophie Hunt has been placed a number of times in the NSEA (National Schools Equestrian Association) Pop-Up Dressage Prelim classes over the winter. Amber Morris who has trained with me since she was 13yrs old has now passed her BHS Stage 2 Teaching exam and is also teaching at CHD, mostly helping with the junior riders as well as working towards an advanced medium competition with Doodle, she is also looking forward to life returning to ‘normal’ so she can get back to her teaching and competing. Sadly we lost one of our long term residents earlier this year. Welsh pony JD will be greatly missed by us all at CHD and many condolences to his owner Lesley. Leaving you with some photos from more cheerful days of our fabulous liveries’ costumes from our Christmas ‘Dressage to Music’ party. Caroline x
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