Skills Development Hunter Jumper Schooling Show July 19 2015

It feels like this show was months ago when in fact it was only just over a week ago. I kinda feel like just typing blah blah blah blah blah and just posting some pictures.  That’s not really what this blog is about though. Document, document, document. Someday I’ll maybe probably be thankful I kept track of our journey. So lets see…I wasn’t even sure I was going to be able to do this show. We were triple booked that day. Horse show (maybe), BBQ and 60th birthday. None of them were all that close together either. 

John and I got to the barn at around 10:00am and I went right to the show office to find out what entries were like. Luckily for me, entries were low. Sign us up!!!It was a super hot day and jackets were excused. I hate not wearing a jacket. Actually I’ve never not worn  jacket when they’ve been excused. Two reasons, I think that it’s disrespectful to the judge and I hate how I look in pictures without it. But it was so hot, and only a schooling show, and I didn’t want to get my jacket dry cleaned. So for the first time ever I nixed the jacket. Our warm up went really well. And then we had to wait for a bit until everyone else was done their warm up. Waiting is not good for us. We do much better when we can get in the ring warm up and then quickly knock out our rounds. Our first trip was a bit of a disaster.

Course 1: right rein to quarter line vertical, long approach diagonal oxer, outside line in 6 strides, diagonal line in 4 strides, outside line in 5 strides. We landed on the left lead after the first jump and got a really late lead change. We demolished the long oxer. Then we demolished the first of the 5 stride. Okay I’m being a little dramatic, really we just pulled rails. And we did get all the right strides so that’s good. I still don’t know how it happened but we ended up 7th out of 9 entries.

Course 2: left rein to diagonal quarter line vertical, outside 5 stride, long approach diagonal oxer, outside 6 stride, diagonal 4 stride, quarter line vertical.

I love his face here… not so much what I’m doing. Sit up fool!

Our second course was total redemption. We almost had a late lead coming off the first fence but pulled out the change at the last second. the rest of the course was smooth sailing. We pinned 1st out of 9 entries.

Course 3: left rein to quarter line, first of the 6 stride rollback to second of the diagonal line, outside 5 stride, halt, turn on the haunches, first of the diagonal line bend to diagonal oxer, second of the outside 6 stride. Our success was short lived. The rollback was okay, but tight. I wouldn’t say we chipped but we ended up really close, almost under the oxer. Then we demolished pulled the rail on the first of the 5 stride again. Turn on the haunches is not something that we practice on a regular basis so it was a little rough. The rest of the course rode okay. We ended up pinning 8th out 9 entries.  That’s it. I ran out of time so I didn’t end up eq’ing or hacking. I gave Tuck a quick shower, and poultice and then stuffed him full of treats.