Dear Members,

Firstly a Happy and Healthy New Year to all our members and I hope you are all looking forward to the forthcoming year of Club events.

For any Club member that doesn’t already know, Paul Groocock finally lost his battle with cancer and died on Saturday 12th November. Paul and his wife Anne have been active members of our Club for over 30 years and both have previously been Chairmen, Paul some years ago and Anne was Chairman for 19 years until I took over 3 years ago. Unfortunately Anne is now in the grips of Alzheimers disease and is residing in a care home at Verwood. If anyone wishes to visit or contact Anne I have her contact details so just get in touch with me.

We now have three new Committee members to replace the three retiring members, so I’d like to welcome Ian Goodband, Robert Young and Sarah Morton. Robert and Ian were voted onto the Committee at the AGM and Sarah volunteered afterwards. Many of you took advantage of renewing your membership at the AGM and saving yourselves some money as the Membership fees have been increased for 2012 and are now due.

A single adult membership is now £18 and joint adult membership is £28. There is also now a fee of £5 for each child of an adult member to participate in Club events.

Your membership renewal forms are attached to this newsletter and should be sent to Diana McGrail who is now the Membership Secretary as well as Treasurer.

DON’T FORGET YOU WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO TAKE PART IN ANY CLUB EVENT WITHOUT YOUR COMPETITOR’S NUMBER WHICH WILL BE ISSUED WHEN YOU RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP SO RENEW NOW

Two new rule changes were voted in at the AGM. There is now no longer a fee to join the Club, or rejoin if you forget to renew on time, and the age at which you can join the Club has been changed to 16 years (reduced from 17 years).

I’m also pleased to let you know that Horse Bits Tack Shop at Corfe Mullen will be offering special discounts to Club Members on production of a current membership card. The discounts will change on a monthly basis and will be advertised on our Club website and Club facebook page so keep an eye out for the latest offer.

Although there will not be any events in the Club field until the Spring, the training sessions are already filling up so send off your application form if you want to join in. We have moved some of the SJ fillers over to the all weather school for the Winter so the SJ clinics will be able to use them if you want to get experience of jumping fillers before a competition. We have also devised a slightly different form to complete for the training sessions to help us put you in the most appropriate group so please use that to apply for a place on any of the Clinics in future (see end of newsletter).

Denise