Guest blog post: Team Tunnah Eventing

If you follow me on twitter it will be of no surprise to you that I find Sophie from Team Tunnah Eventing incredibly inspiring. She works so blooming hard all the time but still has time to ride and compete with Louie, keep her blog up to date and run the ever so helpful Equestrian Bloggers group on Facebook. I don't know how she does it! Since she won the 2016 Equestrian Blogger of the Year Award, I wanted to let the readers of this blog find out more about this wonderful lady! ⬇️

(I have also done a guest blog post on her blog, which you can read by clicking HERE!)
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Hello! I’m Sophie from Team Tunnah Eventing and I’m very lucky to have been invited to guest blog on Roosa’s Horsey Life this month. Why have I been asked? Well, it’s time to pass the ‘baton’ onto Roosa - that’s the baton of being Equestrian Blogger of the Year!

Back in October 2016, I was honoured to win the title of Equestrian Blogger of the Year. It came totally unexpectedly as my blog activity was very different then as it is today. But the lovely judges over at Mirror Me PR & Haynet enjoyed the “variety of quality content coupled with her light hearted sense of humour comes across strongly and makes for a great read and engaging content...posts are presented with an honest and very personable tone of voice, which runs seamlessly throughout”. So, I’ve tried to keep that tone & style ever since!

November Equestrian Blog Hop - What is your riding ambition? Do you have one?

Although I missed the October Halloween themed one, I'm so pleased to be joining in again for Heather from Bridle & Bone's third Equestrian Bloggers blog hop 🎉🎊 I loved taking part and reading everyone's answers for the first one, so I'm really looking forward to this month's theme which is: what is your riding ambition? Do you have one?

Despite the fact that my brother is a professional dressage rider who is aiming for the Olympics, many people always seem to be so surprised that for me, my riding ambition is not to get to the Olympics but to learn as much as possible and to continuously improve myself as a rider. This can be summed up in what Austen from Guinness on Tap wrote as a comment on another blog post of mine where she said that: "for most dressage riders, there is more joy in a supremely balanced, controlled, and forward medium walk then there is in riding a passage you can barely start or stop. The joy comes in doing it right, and in the confidence of your own partnership and skills". This is exactly what I want to be able to do! My riding aim is to be able to do 'it' right and to be 100% confident in my partnership with my horses as well as my riding skills.

An update on Vallu

On Monday the vet was here for another reason, but whilst she was here I thought she might as well scan Vallu's leg even though it's a month earlier than what we had planned! I was at university so unfortunately didn't get the chance to talk to the vet myself, but luckily my mother was willing to hold Vallu and let me know what the vet said. I can't even begin to tell how nervous I was during my lecture, for the half hour I knew they were looking at his leg I didn't hear a single word that the lecturer was saying!!

Christmas wish list 2017

Alrighty guys, get readyyyyy as it's time for my annual Christmas wish list! I have done a Christmas wish list every year since I started this blog and since there's only a month and a bit left until Christmas, it's about time I create the "dear Santa" post that I can share with my family so that they know what they can get me for Christmas - I know they read this! Although I do feel like I'm very early this year because it's only mid November, but oh well here goes!!🎄🎁

1. Montar Amber sweatshirt
Ever since following Equissimo on twitter and Instagram, I have fallen a little bit in love with one of their stocked brands, Montar. Hailing from Denmark, Montar is known as one of the most innovative European equestrian brands. And this sweatshirt... Glittery and grey, what more could you want! ⭐️

Tuesday thoughts: in defence of my schoolmaster

I saw something on Facebook a couple of weeks ago that got my back up as some people felt the need to bash schoolmasters. Some of the comments that I saw were along the lines of: "the idea of a ready trained horse isn't my thing", "a made horse doesn't excite me much, I wouldn't say no if someone offered me a schoolmaster to teach me the ropes at higher levels, but I think the novelty would wear off" and "I prefer to being able to sit back and think 'I created that'." Now I know that these people are not actually criticising my horse, and in no way do I believe that they are insulting me personally but I am still under the impression that my schoolmaster horse and I are not as 'good' as these people and their horses who they have trained themselves...

Apparently he's not as special...

I have never felt the need to go around criticising anyone's horse or to judge whether someone else has trained the horse before or whether the owner/rider did the training themselves. I've trained Basse to elementary with a lot of help from different trainers and I was lucky to be given Vallu who has been trained to small tour level by my brother. BOTH of these horses are equally special and I have as much love and admiration for both of them - they are equally important to me as they have taught me so much. But the fact that Vallu was trained by someone else and is a schoolmaster doesn't not mean that my relationship with him is somehow less important than with Basse who I trained myself.

Trends to watch out for: Eskadron Heritage A/W 2017

🎉📢 Oh my goodness me, I'm so excited that after such a long time we have ROSE GOLD!!! 📢 🎉 Finally, the equestrian fashion world is branching out into using gold rose instead of the typical silver or gold accents! When I saw the first leaked photos I did have my mouth hanging open for a bit in shock because I had genuinely thought that this would never happen... I mean how long has rose gold been a thing? At least several years!

But here we go, this is the new Eskadron Heritage collection AW 2017 featuring cream, brick red, military green, black, basalt grey and rosé as the main colours, with rose gold accents. I was pleased to see Eskadron leave out brown for this collection, I can't actually remember when they last did a collection without some shade brown 🤗 And they've also not done a black for a couple of seasons too, so it was nice to see that coming back - the black glossy wave pad in particular is very eye catching! I'm also really impressed with the military/army green. It's quite an unusual shade of green which I think will look good on so many horses and would predict it could actually turn out to be quite popular. The grey is lovely as always and although I am not the biggest fan of red, this shade of brick red looks good. The rosé (pink) looks to be a bit more of a peachy rose compared to the last two seasons which have been a bit too barbie pink for me, but the hint of peach in this has made me fall in love with this colour! I think it is a totally perfect match with the rose gold. 💕 I'm just SO much more impressed with this collection compared to last year's collection.

Riding exercise of the month: leg yield zig zag

Having recently been focusing on making sure that both of my horses are as supple as possible, I've been working on hard on the lateral movements. Shoulder ins, leg yields and half passes have become my go to exercises at the moment and I do vary between them, but my favourite riding exercise of the month has definitely been this leg yield zig zag!

(Image borrowed from here)

Equestrian Stockholm AW17 Steel Grey set

Having survived the first absolutely manic week of my second term at university this year, I was SUPER excited to see that my Feather Dressage delivery had arrived on Friday. I've been on the hunt for another smart matchy set for training because at the moment I've only got my navy Equestrian Stockholm one, so when I saw that ES were coming out with this colour, I knew I needed to get it! ♥︎

So of course my outfit for the next day was sorted! 💁🏼 I just knew it was going to amazing on Basse (grey on grey rocks!) but I must admit I was bit apprehensive about how it would look on Vallu, especially now that he is in his weird winter coat which is currently just a million different splotches of brown. But I love it, even on him!