Welcome to my new blog, I am so excited to have been given this opportunity by Barnbox UK and Genius Equestrian and look forward to blogging about my past and future adventures with you all.
Ziva & I are dressage amateurs with some big (well realistically they are probably more medium sized) goals that we hope to accomplish with you all reading about the good, the bad and the ugly along the way with us. I juggle working full time as a co-ordinator for a private health care company combined with keeping my lovely 9 year old mare ticking over enough to compete at some of the bigger shows. I have ridden for as long as I can remember as my mother was horsey and I had no other choice really. I had lots of fabulous ponies over the years and we competed in every discipline possible….despite the protests of not wanting to do dressage after disgracing myself on my 8th birthday when my pony fell over in the arena here I am 16 years later.
To give you an idea of our adventure so far I think it is important to start back at the very beginning of our story. Following a few years break from owning my own horse I decided to half-heartedly look again. I was 18 years old and worked as a Saturday girl at the local bakery, so I was ideally looking for something on loan with the view to buy. However the dream was a dark bay warmblood gelding that had been there and got the t-shirt kind of type (you will soon find out I like to buy and do the opposite of what I plan!) It was around march 2011 and an add popped up for a 2 year old black warmblood filly and I was hooked, I couldn’t stop going back to the add, I called and my bubble was burst as she was out of budget, but fate had a plan and 6 months later she was still for sale at a reduced price. So with 81p in the bank (LITERALLY!) I hauled my mother along in the car to go and view her. The only pictures I had seen were of her cantering along in the field in her beautiful summer coat so I couldn’t wait to meet her. When we arrived a small black scruffy thing looked back at me in the stable, her mane nearing her shoulder and covered in mud from wintering out. She nuzzled her little head into me and I instantly knew I had to have her. The owners had halved her price already so I was chancing my luck when I asked if I could pay her up over 6 months, I couldn’t believe it when they agreed! I will forever be grateful to them for giving me that opportunity and we still keep in touch to this day.
Ziva arrived home in March 2012 and settled in like she had always been there, The summer arrived and the journey of backing her began, many days in advance were spent googling how to long rein, how to bit for the first time and pulling out old books from the 80s and 90s that sat dusty in a cupboard under the stairs. When I had given up I sold everything so we borrowed most of our tack and boots for the first year. Ziva took to everything ( and I mean everything ) like a duck to water, her first ride, first hack, first time travelling and first show she acted like she was an old seasoned pro. In the beginning my dreams were to event but Ziva gave gangly a new meaning! She was supposed to make 16.1hh but she has now matured to over 17hh so we decided to do some dressage until she grew into herself. In the winter of 2014 we joined BD and have since won 25/32 classes! You could say since then we have been hooked!
So here we are now almost 6 years to the date when she arrived home and just a few weeks away from our second trip to the NAF 5* winter championships after qualifying in October last year at the petplan finals at Novice level. 2017 was a very successful year, we moved up to elementary, we qualified for the petplan finals then the championships for 2018. We were also 2nd at the Scottish champs and to top it off we represented Scotland for the first time at the home international and won! Ziva enjoyed a long winter off like she does every year, I truly believe it is important for a horse to have his/her downtime and chill, and has been back in work since the end of January with lots of training from Elisabeth Leslie. We are almost ready for our 8 hour trip down to Hartpury next week so I should probably start to memorise the test! I can’t wait to report back the highs and the lows of our time away in my next blog.
Love from,
Ferne & Ziva
