XC Success for Keelin

We had another successful and busy weekend here at #teamdunbyrnestud

Laura headed off on Saturday to SJI in Coilog with Lady for some showjumping. laura and her mare Lady are true all rounders competing at dressage, eventing and showjumping.

Lorna and Emma headed to Marlton for Dressage Ireland. Emma gained her final qualifying score for the National Championships. Lorna and Oisin did their first elementary together and earned a qualifying score in the novice. Both riders are looking forwards to the National championships now at Barnadown at the end of September.

Keelin and lass headed to Punchestown for the Pony Club Novice Tetrathlon,. She and lass put in an amazing round XC finishing clear around a challenging track. Even better - her running and swimming phases were good enough for second place overall. Keelin has put huge work into preparing for this competiton and is looking forward to the next one in two weeks time.

We are delighted to see our liveries setting and achieving goals. We have livery available, please email us to arrange a yard visit

Dunbyrne Dressage Divas

Our liveries had another busy weekend working between the dressage boards.

Myriam and Beau headed to Coilog to take part in the Killcarrick riding club show. They took part in the novice class and earned 3rd place - we think they may have caught the dressage bug now.

Laura and Lady headed to Redhills for the Dressage Ireland show and had brilliant results taking first and second in the prelim classes. This has also qualified them for the national championships!

Emma and Lorna also headed to Dressage Ireland. Lorna and Sammy won their novice classes with Emma and Ruben taking fourth place in the novice class.

Sive travelled to Ballindennisk for her pony club event taking fifth place with Ollie and achieving her goal of qualifying for the Irish Pony Club national championships.

We have full livery available. Our yard is home to several BHS qualified coaches who work with clients to achieve their goals in all disciplines. Email dunbyrnestud@gmail.com to arrange a yard visit.

August Adventures for #teamdunbyrnestud

Its hard to believe its already August - Summer has been flying! Our #teamdunbyrnestud members have been making the most of it.

Sive has started her eventing campaign with Ollie (Political Diamond). These are a new partnership and they have become a wonderful team. They have been competing on the pony club eventing circuit where they achieved their first championship MER this weekend at Kilguilkey!

Lorna and Lynn travelled to Mullingar on Sunday for the AIRC dressage championships. Lynn was competing with Shooting Star Joe in the primary championships - at her third ever dressage competition. Lynn has put huge efforts in this year to train show jumper Joe to also enjoy the dressage ring. Her efforts paid off and she scored an incredible 73+% in one of her tests! Lynn finished third overall and hasn’t stopped smiling since!

Lorna and DBS Second Chance (Sammy) took on their first ever advanced open championship. Trained by our BHSI Ross O Hare they were thrilled to get a personal best score at this level and take home third place overall.

We love seeing riders set and achieve goals. If you have your own horse and would enjoy some training here or at your own venue, pop us an email!

Dunbyrne Livery Equitation Jumping Results

Last week we ran our first in house online competition at our family run livery yard in Co. Kildare. Our liveries train with our onsite BHS and HSI qualified coaches and have been doing fantastic work in their lessons so we wanted to give them a chance to showcase their riding.

Our liveries videoed themselves riding a course of 11 jumping obstacles and submitted their entries. This competition was kindly judged by Christa Dillon, owner of equestrian blog Blackhill eventing and one of the hosts of Buck off banter podcast. Christa’s feedback on our riders was fantastic - “These are not average riders and this is not an average standard. They are all jumping so well, giving the horse every chance, riding under control, using the arena and correcting issues quickly. This shows an advanced thought process behind the riding and shows great maturity in the younger riders”

We as coaches were very proud of our riders - we believe in coaching using the FEI systems for flatwork and show jumping and are delighted to see our #teamdunbyrnestud members progressing.

We divided our riders into three categories and the results are below- We have lots of Easter eggs and Horselyx for our humans and horses to enjoy as prizes

Adults

1st Roisin Daly and Thunder

2nd Sophie OGrady and Leo

3rd Arianne Dunne and Roxy

Aged 14 - 18 years

1st Eileen Nawara and Peanut

2nd Caoimhe Sullivan and Judy

3rd Kayla brown and Betty

4th Ellie Moore and Tilly

5th Georgia Cadogan and Sapphire

!3 and Under

Smoothest Round - Isabelle Smyth & Cooper

Most Stylish Position - Emili Smyth and Cooper

Most Determined - Sophia Manning and Jumanji

Best Jumping Position - Sive Murphy and Domino

Thanks very much to Christa for giving up her time to judge this for us. Thank you to all of our liveries for taking part.

We have livery available in our courtyard stables. if you would like to become part of #teamdunbyrnestud please email dunbyrnestud@gmail.com to arrange a yard visit. Horses are fed haylage and feed twice a day, mucked out daily, turned out daily and have fresh bedding twice a week. Lessons are available at competitive rates with our onsite BHSI and HSI coaches. We have a huge livery arena completely separate to the onsite riding school, a gorgeous all weather 4.5 furlong gallops and onsite hacking. We are 10 minutes drive from Coilog and within 30 minutes of competition venues JAG / Greenogue / Redhills. We are a family run yard and live onsite so there are no strict opening hours and no time pressure on our clients.

Everything you need to know about our forthcoming riding club dressage show

We are delighted that our club, Dunbyrne Riding Club will hold a leg of the Kavanaghs of Newbridge dressage league on Sunday the 14th of April.

Entries:

You need to be a registered riding member of a riding club in order to enter. Entries must be made online by visiting www.itsplainsailing.com/club/drc1

Entries close on Tuesday the 9th April. €20 entry for graded classes, €12 to compete in the Sportsmans class, the walk and trot class or to compete H/C in a class

Classes & Tests:

We will be running the following classes:

• Primary (AIRC Intro A 2011)

• Advanced Primary (DI P5 2012)

• Sportsman (DI P5 2012)

• Intermediate (AIRC 15 2013)

• Advanced Intermediate (AIRC 26 2010)

• Open (DI E46 2013)

• Advanced Open (DI M62 2015)

• Walk / Trot test (DI Intro B 2017)

All tests can be downloaded for free.

Dressage Ireland tests are prefixed DI and are available here:

https://www.dressageireland.ie/members/dressage-ireland-tests/

Association of Irish Riding Club tests, prefixed AIRC are available here:

https://www.airc.ie/downloads/

Photographer:

We are delighted to say that Brian from Saggitarian Photography will be here taking photos on the day - smile for the camera

Tea / Coffee:

We will have tea / coffee onsite and home baked treats the proceeds for the sale will go to charity

Safety:

Safety officer on the day: Rory O’Hare

First Aid Responders: Lorna & Ross O’Hare

Where to find us:

Our eircode is W91 YT62

Preparation and Training:

if you would like to ride through your test and get some practice onsite before the show our onsite BHSI Ross O’hare is available for dressage test training, please email us at dunbyrnestud@gmail.com to arrange a private or group session for you or your club

Joining a riding club:

Dunbyrne Riding Club is open for new members, to enquire or join please email dunbyrne@airc.ie

March of many Disciplines

After the success of our show last week, this weekend proved also to be busy for our riders. Best of all the were able to enjoy it without wind and rain!

Laura Kavanagh and Aoife Harrington travelled to Annaharvey to take part in the hunter trials with their ponies Bobby and Milkway. They had great fun enjoying their ponies in the sun and Aoife now has the cross country bug and is looking forward to more.

Emma, Rebecca and Lorna travelled to Killossery to take part in Dressage Ireland. Emma and Ruben and Rebecca and Honey took part in the preliminary class. Emma and Ruben are working hard on developing as a team together with some great marks showing potential. It is hard to believe that Rebecca, a full time BHS student with Dunbyrne, and her horse Honey have competed in just three dressage shows ever! Their partnership shone through this weekend as they earned impressive scores of 67% and 69% taking home fifth and second place.

Lorna and Sammy (DBS Second Chance) competed in the elementary classes. They had a great day taking home first and third place in their classes.

We are always delighted to see our riders out enjoying their sport and look forward to see what the next few weeks bring.

Dunbyrne Dressage Divas!

It was a very sparkling white affair on Sunday as several of our riders competed at Dressage Ireland at Redhills. The competition season is in full swing at the moment and we were delighted to see our riders heading off looking well. 

Sisters Aoife and Caitlin Harrington had a very early start with Aoife entering at A at 8.18am! Aoife took on the challenge of riding four tests - two each on Cosmic and Killelton Starlight. It was a very very tight turnaround of horses in the novice class with just six minutes between times but Aoife kept her cool under pressure. Aoife won both her preliminary and novice Trailblazer classes on board Killelton Starlight, a fantastic result for their first outing as a partnership. She also took sixth in the prelim and second in the novice trailblazers with Cosmic. Aoife is delighted to have achieved qualification for the preliminary trailblazers at the National Championships in September nice and early in the season.

Caitlin Harrington competed with her chestnut pony Nightlight taking first place in the unregistered preliminary. Big sister Orla Harrington was due a very big thank you having taken on the role of groom for both her sisters as well as for Lorna on the day. 

Keen eventer Ellen Merrins traded studs for sparkles on Sunday to compete her gelding Sillan Ludene in the preliminary classes. The pair had a fantastic Dressage Ireland Debut taking second and third place in their classes with impressive scores. 

Lorna competed with DBS Second Chance at what was their first Dressage Ireland competition of the season. They took third place in their novice class and second place at Elementary level in their second class. Most importantly the pair earned their first two qualifiying scores towards the National Championships. 

Michelle Davitt meanwhile competed in the penultimate leg of the Linda Moore Riding Club Showjumping league at Coilog on board Zono. They placed third in the primary class giving them the lead in the league to date, which they are keen to hold on to heading into the final this weekend. 

We are delighted to see all the training paying off for these riders. Our riders are on livery and train at Dunbyrne Stud with our BHS / HSI coaches Ross, Lorna and Rory O'Hare. If you are working towards competing at pony club, riding club or Dressage Ireland please get in touch to find out how we can help you to achieve your goals. 

Blazing a trail at Dressage Ireland

We have a number of talented young riders at Dunbyrne Equestrian and recently two of our coaches Ross O'Hare BHSI and Lorna Keogh (BHS/HSI) formed what we now call the Dunbyrne Tailblazers. The tailblazers team allows these riders access to quality competition coaching to encourage them to improve their riding and to compete with a positive mindset.

The first tailblazers sessions focused on dressage with riders learning the dressage arena and letters and how to ride the movements within a test. After three weeks of training the team travelled to JAG in November with the Dunbyrne lorry to compete at Dressage Ireland in the trailblazers competitions for young riders. This day out, the first ever dressage competition for the team was a great success with everyone scoring above 60% and lots of positive and developmental feedback from the judges to work on. Zara Logan, Sive Murphy and Hannah Groves competed in the mini trailblazers while Niamh Davitt, Laura Kavanagh, Blaithnaid Sharpe and Molly Dunne all competed in the junior trailblazers. 

Aoife Harrington, a young rider who has been competing for over a year at Dressage Ireland Trailblazers acted as a guide for the tailblazers team members, riding test demonstrations to help them to learn their tests while her sister Orla a successful competitor at Dressage Ireland and riding club was at JAG on the day to help the riders on their first day out. Aoife travelled to Marlton last weekend to compete at Trailblazers. She scored an impressive 73% in her prelim test to take second place. Aoife also rode her first ever novice test on the day earning third place and a good score with plenty to work on for 2018 to progress at this level. 

As the tailblazers team has evolved at Dunbyrne Equestrian we have started to include showjumping coaching into the schedule. Our team have been learning how to ride lines, jump combinations and count strides. We have a showjumping session planned for Saturday as well as a talk for the team on competing with a healthy, positive and balanced approach to competition.  Our riders will compete on Sunday at dressage and showjumping at our Christmas Show - we cant wait to see them in action 

Successful Start to June for Dunbyrne Riders

The June bank holiday weekend saw success in the dressage and show ring for some of our riders. 

Sisters Orla and Aoife Harrington competed in Dressage Ireland at the National Sports Campus on bank holiday Monday. Fresh from her success at the riding clubs dressage qualifier, Orla continued her winning streak winning the elementary class with DBS Goldfever with over 70%. This was a lovely finish for Orla ahead of her leaving cert this week - she will be hoping to get the same scores in her exams! Aoife Harrington and her pony Cosmic (Milky Way) competed in the preliminary class. Aoife previously competed in an unregistered class and has been training to improve her riding of the test ahead of her first registered competition. The hard work paid off as she and her pony took first place on the day. 

On the same day Megan Quigley and Lorna Keogh headed to Killossery for their horse and pony show. Megan competed with her chestnut mare With or Without You (Mia) and Lorna competed with her chestnut gelding DBS Second Chance (Sammy). Megan and Mia won the lightweight hunter class and took second place in the side saddle class while Lorna and Sammy took second place in the Small Hunters and reserve champion.