OAKWELLYN WELSH PONIES OF COB TYPE

Dutchman is a Dutch Gelderlander. We bought him in May 2005. We had been to look at many horses but non of them seemed to have the ummphh that we were really looking for, but he certainly did! We had him on trial for a week and i took him to the first hunter trial I had competed in for 3 years (I didn't half ache the next day because of his huge movement). He looked after me the whole way around and i was very pleased with him. We then took him to see him being  jumped by a good friend who ran a Hunting Yard, one of his girls took him around some fairly big jumps and he had a bit of a clown around and had a great time showing off, the friend then advised us that he was 'too much of a horse for us' ( I had badly lost my confidence on a previous horse). We went against this advice and bought him anyway. Two years on we are doing BE and just starting to be placed. Due to his breeding, Dutchman has a naturally very high head carriage so last season he was permanently being marked as hollow, anyone who know anything about Gelderlanders will appreciate that this isnt hollow and therefore the judges didnt really know what they were talking about, anyway with a further year of schooling he seems to be much softer and no longer is described as being 'hollow', he has improved incredibly in the two years we have been schooling him and he is willing to please 85% of the time, the rest of the time he prefers to be a clown! Dutchman loves his jumping and we are working on increasing his speed but encouraging him forwards and trying to tech him that elivation uses twice as much energy on a cross country course! He is not easy to ride but he is a gentleman most of the time! At present he is at top fitness and now just waiting for some suitable competitions to have some more fun at. At present Dutchman is practising his Traverse and Shoulder-in, he doesnt need to much practice otherwise he will find some other way of entertaining himself! Dutchman's dressage scores have improved drastically over the past few months thanks to the help of List 1 dressage judge Malcolm Brown, Dutchman is now recieving much better scores most of the time, some judges still hold his breeding against him!