Isabella Shaw Eventing

Ever since I was small and I watched event riders training at Somerford Park Farm which was near where my Mother kept her own horse, I knew I wanted to do what they did. For what felt like a very long time I didn't own my own pony; I shared my Mother's lovely 15hh mare Princesa when I could before then, but my very first pony was a 12.2hh Chestnut gelding named Snoopy whom I loaned in 2009. After some scary accidents with Snoopy, I became scared of most horses. Strangely, I still wanted to own my own pony and ride myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A slightly wild (but awesome) companion pony named Davey, who was bought to keep Princesa company when we moved to a house to where we could have the horses at home, brought my confidence with horses back. We worked together in hand often. He was never ridden by us but we handled him often and I was fond of sitting around with him.

 

2010

After a year of searching for a new pony to ride, I found a lovely confidence giving mare called Coco (Just Coco) who stood at 13hh in 2010. Coco was a wonderful pony for me who began to teach me how to ride and overcome my fears. Together we joined the East Cheshire Pony Club in 2011 and we became a part of lower level show jumping and dressage teams. At this point, I'd decided I prefered show jumping to eventing because it was a more realistic goal for me. However with Coco's age (20s) and her height, we couldn't jump any bigger than 2'9 (I'd become rather adventurous once my confidence was back) so we thought she'd be better moving on to a new owner to give them confidence and as much fun as I'd had with her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2011

By chance in June 2011, I found an advert for a 14.2hh who looked very fun as a next pony. So on the first viewing we took our trailer as he was in Wales and I liked him so much that we took him home that very night! He made me slightly nervous because of how fast he went to jump the 1 foot jump I tried him out with... My Mum thought Only Sometimes (Leo) would be outgrown as fast as Coco was, but it turned out he was a pony that kept on giving! I kept riding Coco for the rest of the year, and we competed in multiple show jumping competitions while I just started to ride Leo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012

In 2012, Coco was briefly retired and eventually (in early 2013) sold on to a new little girl and her friend and I began to start riding Leo properly. We started off with competing at our local show, and we were lucky enough to qualify for Royal London show in Working Hunter and Show Jumping. Mum and I decided to go and though I didn't come anywhere in the show jumping, we came 5th in the working hunter over a 3'6 course! I'd never jumped that big before so jumping it was a bit of a shock. Over the Winter, we tried arena eventing as I'd remembered enjoying it with Coco and I wanted to do what I had originally wanted to do: eventing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2013 & 2014

That next year I competed in my first ever One Day Event at Smallwood with the Pony Club. Our dressage scores were horrific but it was apparent that Leo was a good Cross Country pony from the moment we stepped out of the start box. I only completed one more event that season, the Cheshire Shield hosted at Somerford Park Farm by my pony club. After finally getting to complete Somerford's Grassroots eventing course (we entered the 90cm), I set my sights on eventing more in 2014. However unfortunately my appendix burst in September causing me to be out of action for a month. Between Winter nights and school, Leo's fitness quickly deteriorated and with a promise of an arena at home in the new year I decided to bring him back for the spring. My new loan show pony, Arca unfortunately had to be returned when my appendix burst. Of course, there were issues with the arena and it wasn't finished until August.

 

I decided to leave the rest of the year off as the season had finished by the time I'd brought Leo back into reasonable fitness. In January we had rescued racehorse "Howareyougoingon" or Howie for short. He'd suffered a tendon injury from racing and point-to-pointing, so most of 2014 was focused on bonding withh him. Around Christmas time, I decided to start getting Leo fit for 2015 and see where it went from there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2015

Learning from my previous experience with dressage, I started off the year with a serious focus on dressage for my eventing. I planned to enter around 4 ODEs... Through March and April we competed in some show jumping competitions but mostly dressage competitions locally. We had a go at qualifying for the Pony Club championships but on the same day I attempted my first dressage to music test and ended up crossing them over! However our dressage scores went from around 60% to 66% in just two months! Very pleased with our progress, I started to enter One Day Events again. We completed Smallwood and the Cheshire Shield like in 2013... but we also entered 6 more events! From May to September we'd completed a total of 8 together with a best of 27.5 dressage, 4 faults and a flying clear round cross country. Out of these events we started XC at 7 of them and had a clear round at every single one with varying times. We've been 33 seconds too fast and 20 seconds too slow, as well as being just right 4 times.

 

During 2015 we also competed in dressage, show jumping and combined training Pony Club events. In September a new horse, Merry Dhalia (Dhalia) was purchased. At 3 years old rising 4, she would be just right for BE 4YO classes in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2016

Coming Soon!