In the Saddle: Practice makes perfect....

We've been trying to get him used to so many things whilst he is still a youngster – the more we expose him to the better the horse he will become in the future.

A few weeks ago we took him to his fourth show this season. That's quite hard core for such a little guy and he's been doing ever so well. This time we took him to the Doncaster Racing College.

We always do a youngstock class. This means usually anything up to three years old can enter this class. You expect to see lively babies leaping about and mine is no exception. It was surprisingly a big class. I thin there were ten or eleven in the ring and this made it all the more exciting for Sully.

Well, Sully leapt about and was chewing anything in sight from his lead rope to my stick and at one point he even tried my tweed jacket. I did wonder if he would attempt to eat the judge's hat like has done before.

The judge loved him. She would have loved to have seen more but he was faffing about and wouldn't show off his paces in trot.

Sully was awarded 6th place, but then we went into the next class and took first place in Novice Combination (those in their first season together) which was awesome.

My friend Nichola Wall did well to take third place in the same class with her beautiful boy Iggy. She also had a great day coming back with plenty of rosettes too.

We came third in Unusual coloured and Sully had a great day. I'm grateful to Jodie Exley from Photovision for her superb photography. Lord knows how she captured such beautiful photos from a wriggle-bum horse but she did! She was very, very, very patient. What a star. I love my pictures. I even ordered a mug from her.