Rocho has been going fantastically, and is on his way to move up to inter I tests very soon. I have enjoyed taking him to Ulla’s a bit more regularly and her fantastic training is starting to be reflected in my climbing percentages however- a still there’s a long way to go!

My little colt Siro has learnt to lunge and is gently working up to being backed very shortly. He is very trainable and so far is very laid back about his education. I will post more news and pictures as it happens.

I am developing more clinics now in the Petersfield and surrounding areas in Hampshire, so if anyone has a venue they’d like to hold a clinic at then please get in touch. Otherwise I have regular clinics being held from September at Highbrook.

I wish you all continuing success in your training and competing, keep checking the website for news, pictures and updates.

Dominique

I have very much been enjoying life with the horses at Highbrook, and am pleased to be a trainer there again. I can once again offer lessons, clinics and full training livery there in the fantastic facilities and beautiful surroundings.

I have been competing and have won a PSG on my fabulous Rocho with 66%. I have also been training with Ulla and am looking forward to the next clinic in august. I have started lightly backing my gorgeous colt Siro and he’s proving to be every bit as intelligent and talented as I hoped, so hopefully he’ll  prove an easy one to back.

I hope you all enjoy the new website and I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Dominique

I sincerely hope that all of you and your four legged friends are well and are looking forward to the up and coming show season, and may I add optimistically a nice dry and warm summer! Pleeeeeaaaaaassssseee!!!!!

My two boys Rocho and Siro have settled back into the fabulous Highbrook stables and are enjoying the lovely facilities, as am I.. Everyone has been so welcoming to me and I am delighted to be back.

I have been preparing in earnest for the start of the shows and I hope to get some good results with Rocho this year all being well.. I aim to take him to some new venues, now that we have the spooking under control!- We think!!  We are starting out at Prix St George in March and hope to work up to Inter I in a couple of months time. I will also be going away to train with Ulla Salzgeber as often as possible.. The next one is at the end of March.

The clinics, I am delighted to say have proved very popular, and I am very grateful to all the organisers, for keeping me warm with hot drinks and cheery banter, oh and of course Barbara’s fantastic cake..! I hope to increase these further and add on more dates as the months go by. If you have a group of people who would like to make a new clinic, at any location, please feel free to get in touch.

I would also like to thank all at Equestrian Linx for their new sponsorship of me, I look forward to wearing the logos and displaying it on my lorry as we trek around the country. For more information on Equestrian Linx please visit www.equestrianlinx.co.uk 

Lets hope that the spring brings beautiful riding weather, so we can recover from this hard winter and get out and about with our horses..

Happy Riding

DPxx

My last post included news of my new training base in Farnham.. the past 6 months have been very good in all manner of ways.. I have attended fantastic training clinics with my fab trainer Ulla Salzgeber and feel for the first time in my career so far that I’m starting to be the sort of rider I always wanted to be. Lots and lots of work to do yet of course but I now feel like I have the absolute right situation for my future  development.

The situation at the yard I had rented for 6 months however has proven not to be suited to my ambitions as the facility, and may I say with regret the people are not the setting for the professional course I need to follow. However it was an excellent stop gap in as far as giving myself the opportunity to develop an extensive network of clients and i’m delighted to say have met some very good friends. It also meant of course I was able to keep my beautiful stallion entire. Many yards are not willing!

I would particularly like to thank Rachael Welch for all her hard work in my promotion and her continuing help and support… Thanks Rach, i’m really looking forward to working with you and Freddie in 2010, and I look forward to more clinics and new ventures in the coming months! Also thanks to Lisa for her part in organising clinics, keep them coming please! x

This now brings me to talk about the new start.. I’m really pleased to say that I have been invited back to Highbrook Stables in Liss Hampshire. Those of you who know me well will know that it was a place that I didn’t want to leave originally, but i’m very pleased to say that circumstances have changed there and now makes it possible for me to return. So  thanks to Helen and Hans for accommodating myself,  Rocho and Siro again. I so look forward to returning and bringing my horses on in such a great environment.  We will be returning with  just two of my current liveries on the 1st Feb.

Going back to Highbrook means that I can now concentrate fully on my top horse Rocho and the early training of stallion Siro. I will therefore only be working as a trainer from now on and not doing training liveries at all. This is better all round as I will have alot more time to dedicate to my own personal training, and also the training of my clients. I will also be able to do more clinics at various sites in the U.K. I am so pleased to be in position to operate like this again as the training is what I love and do the best.

To conclude I wish all clients and friends a very happy and successful 2010. I will be updating the website with information, pictures, videos and blogs very soon , so keep checking for updates!

Kindest Regards

Dominique x

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….

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

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.

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.

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!

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.