Marcus first came to us - or rather his mother Yvonne did - just after winning the BYRDS Talent Spotting finals. Part of the reason he and Delilah won was because only Marcus had the experience and talent to ride the almost delinquent Delilah and the competitors have to swap horses in this competition! You can see what Cool, Calm & Collected did for Delilah below.

Since then Marcus, and his older brother Myles, have helped us to evaluate our WINNINGEDGE technology. They have also gone from strength to strength in the world of dressage.

At the BYRDS Home Internationals Marcus and his new mount Maesyfron Rhett were the most successful competitor at Medium level with three first and a fifth.

Delilah - pony for talented 12 year old

Stop press - 26th June 2006
Before you read this story you will be interested to know that Marcus and Delilah scored 78.3% in a prelim dressage test and 69.2% in a novice test. Both the best scores they have ever achieved. The judge said it was the best prelim test she had even judged! Now read on to see what Delilah used to be like.

March 2006
Fidelis Semper, otherwise known as Delilah, was quite a handful for talented 12 year old Marcus Watt. Delilah had really nice paces and loved XC as did Marcus, but combined those good attributes with taking advantage of Marcus in any way she could think of. Spooking was her speciality, she would shoot off after the jump, she would not focus on flat work and she would take off at full gallop in dressage arenas. She even started perfecting a very nifty spin round and was getting tricky to hack. It came to the point that dressage practice was better for Marcus on an 18hh dressage horse than the 148 cm Connemara x Cob Delilah. The best way to get Delilah to start to listen was to ride her hard for three quarters of an hour before commencing the real work.

Nothing if not determined, Marcus had his sights set high and entered a British Dressage competition called "Talent Spotting" in Aberdeen, which he won and was duly booked into the finals at Addington, Bucks. With grit and determination Marcus won the final, apparently the only boy to have won the Pony Section and the youngest that year!

At this point I (Mum) saw a flyer in the British Dressage magazine for Cool, Calm & Collected. Despite having tried most of the calmers without much success, my nerves were getting too frayed worrying about Marcus's safety and we decided to give it a go. After a few weeks we were sure we could see a difference. Delilah was much easier to work with, especially in schooling. She would now come straight into her work with no messing and no need for a hard ride in first and would give 25-30 minutes good work before starting to look for ways out of it. She now feels she can cope with situations without having to take flight and run in the opposite direction and is even hacking happily on her own! But the results were not completely consistent, with good days and bad days.

When phoning up to reorder I had a chat with Malcolm Green about her progress and inconsistency. It turned out I was feeding the supplement seven days a week instead of five days out of seven as recommended. On changing to this we noticed Delilah became much calmer in her temperament and was generally far more consistent in her behaviour - in her good behaviour that is!

We now feel Marcus can really start to go forward with Delilah and she has just been affiliated to British Dressage. Marcus would love to qualify for the Nationals and wants to do lots of BYRDS competitions. Now it all looks possible!