Please excuse the gap in blogging—once we moved to the showgrounds, it took a while to find an internet connection. But here’s the update…

On Sunday, Will had a jump and canter on both of his, as did Jennie on Ping. They were all great, we joked as they headed out on Ernie and Ping as both are quite behind-the-leg-horses and we weren’t sure who would take the lead in the canter. “You go first, no, you go first, no, you and don’t go fast, oh no chance of that I’m whipped from that jump school. Yeah me, too do you think we could just stand still and watch the countryside? Sounds like a good plan!”

As it turns out, Ernie took the lead and kept wanting to buzz off with Ping hot on his heels, so when they got back to their stalls they were both quite proud of themselves.

When we got back to the hotel, I was exhausted. I don’t know if it was jet lag or my body telling me to slow down, but after my leftover pizza, I fell asleep at around 5 o’clock. I only woke intermittently to eat some chocolate as Will said he would go and do lates and managed to sleep through to 6 o’clock the next morning. Thank God Will—as usual the great boss and friend that he is—let me sleep because I woke the next morning ready to take on the world. Well, Germany anyway.

Yesterday we packed up and loaded all of our trunks into a lorry to take all of our “stuff” to the show grounds. Today we will hack over the horses and meet the lorry to unload. I get another chance to wear my fabulous new britches, even it if is just for another hack.

A couple of hours later and here we are waiting for in-barn vet inspections. The hack over was a success with only one wheel and spin at the bridge and thankfully no one bucked off. Will went straight to the arenas on Missie to have a dressage lesson with Sandy Phillips and I went on ahead on Ernie to get the stalls set up. Kelly had followed the lorry with all the “stuff” and somehow in the time it had taken us to hack over managed to unload everything and put water buckets and stall guards up for everyone. She is a rock star, in my book anyway.

She actually just told me that she was a ‘percussionist’ after I told her that—even though we were still hot and heavy in battle in Blog Wars—I had written that she was a rock star!

Back to the horses—the lesson was successful. Will said it was great as they have ring familiarization through tomorrow afternoon and Missie seemed very settled. He then got straight on Ernie for a lesson, again, successful. Then he was off to get Jennifer Mosing (Ernie and Missie’s owner) from the airport and left us to finish set up and take care of the horses.

I always enjoy the time you get to hand graze and hang out with people. Today it was me and Jennie; we put the world to rights and have a grand plan for life (well not really but we enjoyed getting to know each other a little better). 

Will arrived with Jennifer and she was happy to see both her horses were well, bribing Ernie with mints in exchange for a bit of loving. Will is incredibly fortunate to have such a fabulous owner, as am I from a groom’s point of view. She loves her horses and enjoys coming to watch Will compete and never puts any amount of pressure on him. She endures the downs in a very matter-of-fact way and enjoys the ups with Will as any owner would.

Everyone is starting to pour in now and is making it seem like we are really over here for a big competition, not just hanging out. It has seemed like an eternity since we left little old Hoffman, N.C. and yet we haven’t even started.

It seems that in-barns are done differently over here; the vets are going stall by stall, started at 5 p.m., and you’d never believe it, we are the last stalls in the last barn. Oh well, the only rush being to get back to the hotel to watch the only English speaking channel, BBC World News. Will has gone to dinner with an exhausted Jennifer and her 8-year-old son, Benjamin, so that they can get an early night and be refreshed for the 5 p.m. jog tomorrow afternoon. Yes, I did say 5 p.m.

Today we have entertained ourselves by listening to Jennie’s delightful rap music and I have decided to take up dancing in her new Pikeur shadbelly tails—this was caught on video and may, much to my embarrassment, end up on some eventing website!