New Post, New Training Base, New Start….

Hi all,

It has been a very busy but industrious few months. I am very happy to announce that I have a new training base in Farnham, Surrey. I will now be offering quality training livery alongside my usual, valued training sessions.

I have spaces for any level of horse and rider who would like to make use of my wealth of experience and realise their potential. The yard is a small, friendly training environment with a nice airy american barn/ tackroom complex, and a large all weather arena.

I can take any horse on a permenant or short term basis at a very competitive rate, and can offer a great service and quality training. I can also accomodate young horses, and training for a short time while owner is on holiday or preparation for sale or competition. Alot of people have found this service very helpful in the past.

Personally I have been doing very well, Rocho has won a couple of advanced classes and is coming on in leaps and bounds. The most amazing thing that has just recently happened is that I have been accepted to train regularly with the legend that is Ulla Salzgeber!! Rocho and I went away for two days training at the beginning of august for the first time, and had a fabulous time. Ulla was such a great teacher and was very encouraging and complimentry about the progress we made.  I am really looking forward to learning as much as I can from this talented lady, and further my career to greater goals and also filter down her fantastic training to my own clients across the board.

My Beautiful colt ‘Siro’ is growing fast.. (now 17 months as I write this) He is stunning and very sweet natured with a cheeky personality. I am very excited about his future and potential all being well- hopefully Ulla will have worked her magic by then and I will have the skills to turn him into a great horse…

Going back to the new yard, I will possibly have opportunities in time for trainee grooms and riders- please email if interested.

I look forward to being able to offer quality training livery and just training to anyone who may want to learn dressage and make themselves  and their horse the best they can be in my relaxed and friendly new yard, where I hope we’ll have alot of fun working towards our individual goals.

Check back soon for an update on how the yard is progressing, my horses and other news….

Winter News

Doesn’t time fly… It seems no time at all since I last wrote.

I have been very busy, and having the greatest time. I was fortunate to be taken on by the great trainer Markus Gribbe, and after an initial assessment of my riding (where I rode like a spanner for the first 20 minutes) he agreed to take me on in regular training. I feel very lucky to have been given this opportunity.

Training has been going brilliantly, and although I know I have so much to improve on, I feel for the first time in years that I have a chance to make myself good.  Training with Markus is fantastic because he is so exacting and his training is so correct. This has definitely been reflected in our scores, and we have had 4 wins consecutively.

The first was at Oldencraig medium with 71%,

The second again at Oldencraig medium 68%

The third at Oldencraig advanced medium 68% (in previously very spooky international arena)

And the fourth at merrist wood advanced medium 69.4%

I am now training hard to get ready for PSG while we have a short break from competing until the new year.

My little colt- or not so little… Is doing very well. He is a very nice character with the same stunning looks I have in Rocho. He is black with 3 white socks, a star and a snip, and more importantly he has fabulous paces.

I have clinics going on almost every week now and saturdays are pretty full. I do always have a few spaces however, so please feel free to contact me for bookings and dates.

Kind regards to all of my clients, and people who visit my site. I will write very soon.

Dominique

Late Summer Update

Hi All!

Well it’s been a couple of months since my last post. It has been a hectic few months as I got married in August and have been on honeymoon to beautiful Capri. Prior to that there was frantic wedding plans, lots of busy clinics and I have been training Rocho regularly with Vicki Thompson. This has been going very well and it’s great to be working with her again. Rocho has been enjoying it too and i’m delighted to say has not been spooking! Certainly seems to a thing of the past and was well worth the time I’ve invested to be patient with him and develop his mind to cope with things he finds so terrifying!

I also am waiting keenly for the arrival of my new colt. He was born in march this year and is by the enviable Sir Donnerhall. We are hoping to keep him entire and i’m very pleased to have a young horse to bring on again and he is a very exciting future prospect. His name is Siro and he was bred by the brilliant MKM sporthorse stud up in Aberdeen.

I was also very lucky to buy my own horsebox, so for the first time in many years I now have my own transport, so hopefully I will be able to get out and about a bit more now.

I have been very lucky to gain several new clients recently, and i’m looking forward to working with them in the coming months. Good luck to you all in this coming winter series.

Please check back soon for news, clinic dates, and new features and info on the site.

May And June Update

Hello all, I have been extremely busy which is great, but it meant I had no time to write the news for May. So i’m combining May and June’s news together.

I have had clinics/lesson days nearly every saturday recently, and i’m really pleased to say that my clients have had some outstanding success! Elly and Bonnie from Badshot Lea equestrian centre went to Oldencraig last thursday and achieved  a whopping 70% in the prelim class and 1st palce. Elly hasn’t competed for a while, but has been working really hard on her mare in the past months and it showed with her best ever score.

Stephanie Moreland and Pannie of whom has only recently started lessons with me, previously used to get scores in the 50% bracket, she went to the Priory a couple of weeks ago and got her personal best score of 67%. Jenny Martin and Duncan also had a great result with 1st place at a prelim show with a 67% score. Many congratulations to them all. I am becoming a very big headed trainer with all my clients doing so well!!

I want to say a big welcome to Helen Scott - Cowell  who has joined us with her beautiful black hanoverian mare ‘Diva’, they have made very good progress and hope to be out competing very soon.

Highbrook is now proud to announce they’ve now got 200 acres of land, which we are all enjoying hacking around- it’s great for me because it means I can safely hack Rocho out without worrying about the road, and he can have a break from training a couple of times a week in the beautiful surroundings. Last saturday we had a cross country building day with everyone building a jump each in a team. There were prizes for the jumps, and a lovely BBQ in the evening. It was great fun, and was a brilliant way to get some jumps up, and they are all very professional looking fences. So Highbrook has now got a x-country course to add to it’s impressive facilities.

May/ June’s top training tip:

 If you are heading out to dressage competitions this summer, remember to learn your test really well so you feel confident in where you are going. That way you will feel completely prepared and in control if your horse turns out to be a demanding ride. However make sure you don’t practise it too much on board, as they will start to know it rather too well and predict the moves! Instead, break the difficult bits down in training and practise them separately.

April’s News

April has just flown by so far for me, I am delighted to say that I’ve been nicely busy at Highbrook, teaching clients old and new. Natalie has been welcoming liveries in for short stay training with me, and long term boxes are filling up fast. Nicky Brown’s lovely mare made some cracking progress while she was with us, and we welcomed Karen and her beautifulblack mare Weiser to the yard as a permenant livery, training of both horse and rider is progressing well.

Rocho has been going really well, and I have been concientiously keeping up my Michael Peace training in conjunction with normal stuff. The spooking is much better, and he has been getting mid to late 60 per cent scores again,  much to my relief - and not a mention of tension or a related comment!! Hopefully we can continue this progress and keep improving those scores!

A well done to Jenny Martin for gaining 65% in her second ever riding club elementry, and also to Kerry Dodd-Irwin for her 63% at Merrist Wood recently. Kerry has worked tirelessly since christmas on the lunge to completely re- learn and develop a classical dressage seat and position, she has been so dedicated and great to work with. I am so pleased all her hard work is paying off, and she is gaining the higher marks now- just goes to show it’s so valuable to work on the rider to generally improve the horses way of going.

My clinics are proving really popular I am delighted to say, the Solent Riding club and I had a lovely day at the beginning of the month, and I have a full day of people for my own clinic this saturday. Thankyou for all the people who booked in, i’m sure we’ll have a great day – even if it’s raining!( Indoor school on it’s way…) I will be organising one per month now, details of which are available if you fill out the web enquiry form. These clinics are great for new faces to come and meet me for assessment, one off help or a trial to see about regular sessions. All standards and abilities more than welcome! If you’re really lucky you may even get a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea!!!!

April’s Top Training Tip 

If you suffer badly from nerves before your competitions, try to give yourself a bit of a pep talk and say to yourself that there is no reason for you to get stressed about what may or may not happen. Just remember you have nothing to lose by going out there and trying your best, you often get better results if you enjoy the whole thing and just let it flow!

 

March News

Hi everyone, I hope you have all managed to enjoy your riding despite the horrible weather we have had recently. I managed to get a fairly nice day for my first clinic with the Solent Riding Club. Thankyou to everyone who attended, and thankyou for the complimentry feed back, i’m really pleased you all enjoyed it and found my training helpful. I will be running a clinic open to all every month from now on. Please feel free to email me for the dates and to book in.

I would also like to thank trainer and behaviourist Michael Peace who visited Highbrook and helped me with Rocho’s spooking problems. I wasn’t getting anywhere with it myself, and I had found Michaels approach to clipping really helpful. It has worked brilliantly, and I was thrilled when we got him to walk over tarpaulins calmly and confidently in one session! Something I didn’t think I would see my boy do with me on board. I  look forward to developing the training I started with Michael, and can see that it will greatly help Rocho’s confidence in the show arena. Hopefully this will mean better scores, and not so much tension!

 March’s Top Training Tip

Take time out of your usual training regime to do something different with your horse. I have found this important with Rocho to keep a freshness to his work, and help develop his mind. Even the most talented horses need a change from time to time.

February Update

February has been a busy and exciting month. Rocho and I have been to a couple of shows at Merrist wood. The first wasn’t great score wise, he was still placed, but it proved to be invaluable for training purposes as my trainer Eileen came to watch, and it gave us a great chance to see how to tackle the tension that he seems to get from the atmosphere of the arena at shows.  We then spent a week training at home to get him really through and settled going past various objects near the school, and when I took him back he was much better- realising that the pot of flowers really wasn’t going to kill him!! We got 63.4% and 3rd place which leaves still plenty of room for improvement, but the comments I got were much more favourable and not a word about him being tense and hollow.

Another bit of exciting news is that the feed company Simple System Ltd has offered Rocho and I support by way of sponsorship. I am delighted to work with them and there will be a link to their website shortly. For now the site is www.simplesystem.co.uk Many thanks to Tim Warren and Jane Van Lennep for their help and support.

Things at Highbrook are going really well, and more and more liveries are coming in. The plans for the new indoor arena are going through as planned and we have great hopes for the construction to start soon. Natalie Parry (Highbrook’s yard manager) did her first point-to-point of the season on her beautiful black horse Glenny, and was delighted by the way he ran, and is training for another one in the near future. Clinics are now underway, approx one a month. Please email for details and dates.

 February’s Top Training Tip

Work on your seat and position to gain a really strong, correct and effective position. It will take some hard work on the lunge without stirrups, but is of course worth it, and the only way to achieve a good position. Please get in touch if you would like to book a lunge lesson.

Happy New Year!

New years greetings to you all! I hope 2008 brings a great deal of success and happy riding!

Rocho and I have an exciting year coming up, as we hope to start Prix St George this year. There is also lots going on at Highbrook in the coming months, and lots of exciting things in the pipeline. Keep logging on to hear the latest as I continue to update this blog.

2008 is off to a great start, as we are already welcoming new clients, and generating alot of interest in my training at Highbrook.  I am working with clients on a wide range of areas such as basic improvement for a couple of my ladies to raise their 3 day event scores, and also with others who are trying to improve/strengthen their seat and get their horses to work more sharply on the aids.

 If these are areas where I can be of assistance to you, I have made it easier to get in touch with me by just filling out the form on the contact page or alternatively by my other contact details displayed on the site.

 Thankyou for visiting the site, and i’ll look forward to hearing from you soon!

January’s top training tip: Transitions, transitions and more transitions! You really can’t do enough of them.

My Competition News

My lovely horse Rocho, did me proud a week last saturday when we went to Merrist Wood to do two advanced mediums. For those of you that don’t know Rocho, he can be very tricky and has lots of attitude. Recently he has developed a very infuriating habit of spooking at pretty much anything! So although he’s competed very well in the last few shows, it’s always hard to know what to expect on any given day. Luckily he’s proving to be very consistent when it matters, and limits the sillyness to generally at home! This show did go very well, and we managed  62% in the first test – 3rd place and 62 again with a first place. We have only done three advanced mediums so far, so i’m chuffed he is already doing so well. So now i’m needing to focus on picking up those scores!

Congratulations also to my client Kelly, and her horse Dream for gaining 63% in their first ever prelim test!

Keep a look out for updates to this blog page for more competition news. I will be holding a clinic at Highbrook in January focusing on accuracy and help to improve your tests. Any level will be welcome. For information about this or any other topic please get in touch.

Introduction

Welcome everyone to my new site, I hope you will keep visiting regularly and read this blog where I will be publishing my clinic dates, general news and some short articles based around dressage in general, with some advice about any schooling problems people would like to discuss and get some ideas about. If any of you have any thoughts about what you would like me to comment on please contact me on info@dominiquepark.co.uk

I hope you find this site useful and keep visiting to find more pictures and helpful tips and advice.