Equestrian Life May 2018 Issue

Marinaide has his time to shine!
PHOTOS COURTESY OF LRG PHOTOGRAPHY
Furzley Marinaide is a 13yo new forest stallion with many a
brother and sister making a claim to fame with HOYs & RI
appearances on the flat and working hunter but Marinaide has
never had his chance to shine! He has always
been a horizontal stallion and with this in mind he
was put forward and selected to run the forest as a 3yo
in 2008 which was good to be able to put some stud
lines back into the forest and resulted in 27 progeny
being registered the following year! From then he was
broken in and ‘happy hacked’ by his breeder, my aunt
Sandra Kilford. His ‘floating’ trot had always impressed
her and the comfiest canter meant he was never going
anywhere!
With the breed society recently commencing a grading
scheme for both dressage and jumping we thought this
would be good for his CV. So whilst Sandra kept him
fit I took a week or so off before to warm him up and
took part in the gradings and he passed these in 2010 &
2011 the latter was his first attempt at elementary!
The following years he was ‘picked up’ for the
occasional annual outing to the breed show where
he did dressage and combined training picking up an
occasional win but due to the number of other ponies
sadly he never had the time spent on him. That was
until I moved house, allowing me to go from one pony
at livery to two at home (massive dream tick boxed!) after last years
breed show we ‘cracked on’ and registered BD after some local success
at elementary however injury stopped all that so a rather boring winter
ensued (which was fine looking back at the weather!) however we
picked back up early this year and started getting fit again. Thankfully
we had qualified for the NPS dressage back in October and it had
always been my aim to get him to the finals as I’ve felt it’s been his
forte! Serenaide, Mermaide & Fanfaire has all been in
previous years with some success but the girls were
Eventing/show girls!
Our tests went well on the Saturday at Addington,
in the prelim I spotted the judge waving her arms in
an upward motion as I cantered past which left me
questioning what she did or did not like. The novice
test felt better and I had a thumbs up and a big grin
from this judge when we saluted which felt amazing
(but later wondered if she did that to everyone!) when
it came to the presentations I was elated to come top
in the prelim section and then secretly hoped I had
won the novice too (as we work more at that level) and
was so chuffed to get that too. This slightly older man
now has something to his name, which he deserves and
he is the sweetest natured pony! We were completely
unprepared for the music having never done anything
like it but a fellow NF owner very kindly leant me her
music and test plan, to say we winged it would be an
understatement but we eventually came 6th and I must
say the winner was well deserved! It was a lovely day
out although rather long!! To really top it all off Julie
Moxon who came to groom for me had the exciting news that her NF
pony, who is a son of Marinaide gained his stallion license that same
day, so celebrations all round!!
He lives out with his son (gelding) and I’ve just joined BD!
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