First Endurance Report - Rubi in France Blog

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Friday, 8 October 2010
First endurance report
Mr Good Boy has been promoted to Mr Chou Chou d'Amour after his first endurance ride yesterday. He was such an unbelievable superstar!

After spending an hour the night before practicing loading into the new, narrower trailer in the dark with just the interior light on, I went to collect him from the field at 6am, still dark. I thought he might be a bit sticky about going in but he walked straight up the ramp and then stood there like a good, good lad while Herve put the back bar and the ramp up. He then travelled beautifully, with only a small amount of complaining at the peage when we had to stop to collect a toll ticket.

When we arrived at the venue, he was really well behaved and chilled out, though he wanted to walk around rather than stand by his haynet. Can understand that after having been in the trailer for over two hours. His excellent behaviour was even more impressive given that there was a strong breeze blowing, lots of new horses to see and hear and lots of trailer and cars coming and going.

I went to get him vetted and he was a bit poky about the vet's scanner machine but the vet was superb and went all quiet and soft with Rubi, gently approaching him and giving him a stroke, letting him have a sniff of the machine and a look at the stethoscope. His heart rate was at 40! Fantastic for his first event!

When it came to setting off, he was a bit on his toes and spooked as he caught sight in his rear vision of a bunch of cantering horses arriving at the finish line on the other side of the hedge, but it wasn't a serious spook. Then we came to set off and he slammed on the brakes at the sight of the white chalk start line! Eva took a hilarious photo of him prancing over it, hiking his tail over his back like a real Diva, as we set off!

Initially we were riding by ourselves, down through the woods and he was really forward going. His ears were so pricked I thought they were going to cross in the middle. He was utterly spellbound at the new trail we had to explore, down through the trees and there was only minor 'looking at things' - no spooking at branches, birds, carnivorous butterflies etc etc..
Our first challenge lay at the bottom of that forest track as we had to cross a stream!...

Read more here:
http://rubi-in-france.blogspot.com/2010/10/first-endurance-report.html