Horses dress up for festive dressage

(CIEF): ‘Jingle Bells’, one of the world’s most well known festive songs tells of the delight of hooking your horse up to an open sleigh, cracking the whip and dashing together through the snow, bells all ‘a-jingle’. You won’t see any snow at the Equestrian Centre on Linford Pierson Highway this weekend but on Saturday 14 December at 8am until noon, you will see horse enthusiasts from all over the island gather together there for their annual Christmas Fun Show.First up is the most popular and hotly contended ‘fancy dress’ competition. But this is no ordinary fancy dress competition since the horses are the ones to be dressed up.

Sneak along at 8am to see the start of the competition and cast your own votes a to who you think should win! Katie Slagel from Z99’s Breakfast Show is judge and will have the unenviable task of picking a winner on the day.

Entry is free to anyone who wants to come along and watch and join in the fun. While visitors are watching the riders negotiate the western trail pattern competition, the traditional gymkhana games and the nail biting jumping competition, they can play the fun Christmas games set up at the side stalls, make a Christmas craft, ride a pony at the pony park or munch on something sweet from the bake stall.

Once the bells start to jingle you can be sure that the big man in red is not far away. The Cayman Islands Equestrian Federation, the host of this event, does not disappoint and  kids will be delighted to be able to climb up into Santa’s wagon, snap a photo with St.Nick and hand him those last minute list updates for the 25th December.

Milly Serpell, President of the Cayman Islands Equestrian Federation said “ This is one of my favorite shows of the year, everyone loves the fancy dress parade and we have lots of extra fun planned this year in the pony park. We are also excited to watch a special dressage display by Jessica Mctaggart one of our elite international riders’.

If you check out the full version of ‘Jingle Bells’, you’ll see that the driver of the sleigh is full of jollity, merriment and high spirits. If you go down to the Equestrian Centre this Saturday you can guarantee a laugh and you’ll probably have just as much fun as he did, if not more.