Clicking

Bobby gave me A+ rides Monday and Tuesday. He's been clocking around so well lately that honestly I'm starting to get a bit suspicious.

i know it's in there...

After getting Sunday off we came out swinging with a drool-worthy dressage school. Usually I have tell myself that for being Bobby he looks pretty good. Monday he was looking legit as shit for any strangely conformed horse.

I think we've found a good warm up routine for us right now. Right off the bat at the walk he has to accept the bit and reach for the contact. It doesn't matter where his head or neck are as long as he's soft in his jaw, in my hands, and off the forehand. From there we do about five minutes of whatever trot he wants to give me. Again, as long as he's not dragging himself along on the forehand and he's reliably on the bit, he can pick whatever "frame" he wants to travel in.

At that point in the ride we're not really bending and he's kind of turning like a battleship, but I'm not forcing work down his throat which makes him happy, and it gives him a chance to stretch any stiffness out. He's no longer allowed to canter in warm up. He's not connected enough and it just turns into an upside down, braced, flail fest that accomplishes nothing but sometimes running into the wall.

i was sitting up after giving him a good neck scratch.
i swear my posture in a jump saddle isn't that horrible!

Instead we go back to the walk where I start collecting him up off my seat. This is the point where I start to get warm fuzzies about how well trained my horse has become. He's really just getting it lately, and he comes out ready to work from the first step. Once we've got a nice uphill balance where he's really sitting and his front half is way up in front of me, we move into the sitting trot.

Dudes, he was downright brilliant Monday. You all know I'm not one to wax poetic about my horse's abilities on this blog because it's more fun to mock him for his giant ears and silly tantrums, so he must have been throwing down to get some positive attention here.

Our second round of trotting starts out focusing on shortening and lengthening the stride. The shortening is as slow as we can go while still trotting and it takes a lot of leg. When we get it right, it's like dribbling a basketball--he's basically just bouncing slowly forward. Is this what half steps are? I don't know, I'm just here to grin and giggle at how strong and smart my lop eared creature is.

Once we've done a few transitions between the two, his regular trot makes my heart go pitter-patter. He's bouncing but floating but cruising in this big, open stride as soft as can be. Like for real, let me fan myself off here. We're going to the state fair Saturday, but I'll try to get Hubby out for video evidence Sunday. His gotten so strong and confident in his work that it's dreamy.

not a dressage trot. i'm getting better about pushing for good flat work while warming
up for jumping, but we've never going to get to that level in this tack. but look how beefy!

Alright, enough dressage. Let's move on to the jumping, though it should say something about how good the flat work was that it almost overshadows OUR FIRST 3' JUMP IN EIGHT MONTHS!

"why do good boys have to stand here instead of
getting fed cookies back at the barn?"

Tuesday morning we went back out to the jump field for another go-round. I kept my one single jump at 2' to warm up over in case of nerves, then knocked everything else up to 2'6" except for the second jump in the five stride line that went up to 3'. I was super nervous walking around when I first got on--like shaking in your boots show nerves. Once we got to work though, and I was able to focus on just riding my horse, I settled right down.

We started off with the 2' single and Bobby was in full back-cracking mode from jump one. He was jumping out of his skin over everything, no matter that he can walk over 2'6". Top marks for warming up correctly to get him sitting and pushing from behind, and then approaching everything out of a great big forward canter.

I made some tighter turns to jumps to work on keeping his shoulders up and my leg on so that we kept going forward out of corners and whatnot, and just damn--if I asked for it, he gave it. I feel like I'm writing about someone else's horse because when did mine become such a baller?

real talk, how the FUCK do you guys ride in these shirts?
it was only 75* and i was dying.

We finally got around to coming down the line. Bobby jumped in from a long spot, and I was like, "Oh, shit. Do I hold? Do I add leg? Probably add leg. Go, run fast, Bobby!" and then I ran us right past our distance and he jumped from basically underneath it without so much as tapping the pole. Whoops. Sorry, dude.

Right back around we came with me holding to make sure we got in right. I probably held too much because that's how I roll, but we still came in fine and I was like, "Just let him do his thing. He got us to the perfect five last weekend, he'll do the same this time. The height isn't going to change that." And he did, and he threw in another jump that felt like we were going over a 4' oxer instead of a 3' vertical, but not in an "Oh shit, I am afraid of this thing, let me jump really high and away from it." way. More like a "I feel like a fucking boss today, let's have fun with this shit." way.

LIKE FUCK YEAH WE KNOW HOW TO JUMP JUMPS.

those withers tho.

When we were done, he got a bath, a giant flake of candy hay, and a nap while we waited for the chiro. While he has been awesome lately, he's also been pretty sticky in the lateral work and bending in general. He was out in two spots in his neck, his withers, and one spot in his back that needed a lot of love so hopefully that was the final piece of the puzzle. He'll get today off, and then back to work Thursday.

All about that pace

Friday's lesson was the perfect next step for me in the #eventerinrehab journey. I shared the lesson with another adult rider who has heaps of jumping experience, but after her mare died a few years ago she hasn't been jumping up to height or full courses. Still, she's got that rock solid foundation under her and I felt we were pretty perfectly matched for what we were working on.

BM had us get right to the forward canter warming up. "Bobby, you are going to gallop!" I was all, fuck yeah we are, and legged Bobby forward into what I thought was quite a strong canter. Instantly the shouted instructions started pouring in for more leg.

No, more.

MORE.

MOAR LEG, DAMN IT.

ignore the fact that i'm doing...something...and look at my pones opening up his stride finally

Once I felt like we were straight up galloping galloping around the ring, BM said we were at the right pace for warm up. He needs to start off stronger than we're going to jump at so that he's sharp and in front of my leg. His half halt is so solid that I can reel him right back down to wherever--it's the going forward that needs the tuning up now.

It wasn't a scary feeling because A) I used to gallop racehorses back in the day so bitch please. Get over yourself. B) It honestly felt like a nice cross country gallop, and I have no problem letting Bobby roll out in the open. C) I wasn't jumping out of it.

But had I been asked to turn in to a jump right at that minute, I probably could have without panic and terror setting in. Since my abilities are tied in directly to a mental hang up, I try very hard to get myself in a good working mindset going into each jump session. I told myself the next step forward is going to be getting the pace back, and that's what's going to get done today. Period. That way I'm not feeling wishy washy about my work and letting myself slack on things. I want to get back to eventing, and my drive to stay focused on that goal is what's been keeping me pushing myself this year.

Bobby had some issues swapping behind cantering left because occasionally he sucks bending that way (some days it's going right, there's no discernible pattern) and he kept falling out. He gets a chiro visit Tuesday, and I think that will help him out a lot too. We ended with a bomb ass right canter right off the bat, and BM gave us our first course.

it's been so long since i've been able to draw a paint course!

Fence one was a 2' vertical around to another 2' vertical. Three was an X off a super tight turn out of the corner with a long bending type approach to a 2'6" vertical at four, finishing with a 2'3" oxer.

I looked at the 2' jumps and thought, "Those are so stupid tiny. Maybe I should ask her to raise them." But BM knows best so I figured we'd do the course once at that height and then maybe I'd ask her to put them up.

Only then we got going, and I put my leg on and really tried to get that forward pace, and I was happy I hadn't said anything. I quickly realized I've got to get comfortable jumping out of that pace again before anything gets much higher or I'm going to make stupid mistakes and set myself back.

baby jumps ftw

Our first trip wasn't really all that exiting. We were definitely carrying more speed than usual, but it still wasn't up to par. I was also still doing a little bit of grabby hands coming up to the fences and Bobby started bracing his llama neck against me and getting us into bad spots while BM called out, "Long reins, long neck!" He also got schooled the other day in dressage tack about that L-R change and he was flying into it landing off the first diagonal--to the point where I repeatedly had to run him into the wall to get him to stop. Eventually BM forced me into just giving him a super strong half halt and then carry on, but that's going to have to get settled back down eventually.

Our second trip went a little better as I felt more confident and wasn't picking at him so much. Then we moved on to course two:

sorry hunters, but these jumper type course are so much more fun

Of course we had to repeat our long ass approach to the first fence (2'3"), but hunterland practice has got me feeling A-okay about that now. Around to the 2'6" off a shorter approach this time, and then a rollback inside the oxer to the outside vertical again. BM challenged me to take that instead of the long approach around the oxer before we even began, and I know Bobby loves the turn and burn type jumping so I was all for it. He was a champ and took it out of stride every time.

I had trouble pushing through the tight turn to four, but after the first round I was braver and kept my leg on while not touching the reins and it obviously rode better. Then we had to deal with the stupid right lead change before whipping (LOL, slowly turning) around to five and keeping my legs on and hands soft to six.

Again, I had trouble keeping the pace going making the short turns and I kept biffing seven, but I was brave and landed kicking and driving to eat up the three bending strides to the oxer.

I might have started off a little slower than we were looking for, but I let the pace build as we went with each trip and through each course, and in the end Bobby was clipping along at an awesome canter and it didn't faze me in the slightest. The jumps were tiny, but it felt so good to know they were tiny and no harm was going to come if we didn't come in at the exact perfect distance that I was able to totally enjoy myself and let Bobby move out like the event horse he still is somewhere inside.

happy horse loves when i get things right and don't make it so hard for him

I tell her this all the time, but I wish I'd had BM as my trainer years ago. Bobby and I are both essentially re-learning how to jump and these slow, boring building blocks she's set up have been exactly the right path for us. I'd rather leave a ride any day of the week feeling like I could have done a little more than feeling like I've done too much and ruined something.

As a good trainer she's also always one step ahead of me, and I got this text Friday night:

We'd talked last Monday about setting a course out in one of the fields so that it was basically a mock stadium course like I'm going to have to do at an event. We were waiting on rain to soften the footing up a little bit, and I was excited to get out there and see how I would feel.

With my new focus on pace, the fact that these were stadium jumps didn't even make me blink. I had something else to fixate on and everything else just flowed from there. We did a good strong canter both ways for warm up, and then started off with the smallest jump a few times just to make sure I could maintain the pace without picking.

Bobby was jumping so easily and so well that we just kept cruising around, picking things as we went.

hubby needs a serious camera upgrade. i say that every year, and every year it's like,
oh it's not that  bad. it is. it is that bad.

We finished off with the line which, as BM predicted, we did not get five strides in the first time. Bobby cross cantered into the turn and I should have taken the time to fix that before allowing him to jump. We came in under-paced and disorganized and stuffed at least one more stride in than was needed. I came right back around though and we coasted through the five to end there.

giant horse walks over 2'3" which makes being afraid to jump it pretty silly

I'm hoping I can make it to the jumper derby we did last year so I can test my ability to ride forward off property before show season is officially over up here. Also more ribbons. Also also jumping in a big field definitely makes stadium seem less scary.

Friday Foto Finish: KITTIES!!!1jhfskh!!!

It's finally time I shared the story of my teensey tiny little baby kitten because she is so cute and I just want to smush her and hold her and kiss her and carry her around ALL THE TIME KITTENSSSSS.

Okay.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm taking a page out of Emma's book and doing a glorified photo dump of Winona and friends. If you don't like pictures of cats, please leave.

And never come back. I don't want your type around here.

first full day home. she instantly settled in.

i went in adamant that i would not come home with a female.
i played with all the males, but she just kept staring at me while everyone else ran away.
obviously i came home with a female.

she hissed in mags's face the first time they met and mags instantly dropped to the ground,
making herself as small and unintimidating as possible. instant besties after that.

poor old fat cat is just a peace loving hippie, and he was more interested in stealing
her food than anything else. he tolerates her extremely well though.

sometimes she turns into satan at night.

bffs playing bitey face

pig dog is not a fan of cats. she either runs away
or tries to act like they don't exist. kitten don't care.

making caves out of pillows is the best

sometimes she gets too crazy and oscar has to
casually step on her and tell her to calm down.

just chillin'.

zomg look at it!!!

purple platypus travels everywhere with her.

she has an umbilical hernia that's going to get fixed when she goes in to get spayed
in a few weeks. in the meantime i have to push it back in on the daily. gross.

never a bad time for puppy loves.

"hai, i help you make the dinner?"

she loves snuggling her black kitty the most

only one paw on the counter is ever allowed. fat cat teaches her all the rules.

nap time after the olympics

helping unpack food after camping.
ok, so those rules are sometimes broken...

I hope that's enough kitten pictures to tide you over for the weekend! Don't worry, I'll keep being a crazy cat lady and taking more.

Move Out

Thank you guys so much for all the rah-rah on my last posts. You are the loveliest of lovelies, and I totally count blog friends as part of my pony support system.

BM asked if I wanted to do another hunter show this weekend, but I'd already clocked out on that mindset and didn't want to show up mentally unprepared. Instead I gave ole britches two days off and brought him back to work in dressage tack yesterday and today.

i hadn't used the black tack in so long it was growing mold. whoops.

The biggest thing BM and I discussed after the show (well, really all the time, just with more seriousness as far as putting it into motion now) was getting me comfortable jumping at speed again. Now that I know Bobby has a rock solid half halt, he'll listen in front of the fence, and he's not going to take off with me--hmm, that all sounds like the same thing, you chicken--I should theoretically be comfortable letting him carry more pace to the jumps.

The problem is that Bobby sucks at lengthening his stride at the canter. He can go faster, sure, but actually opening up his stride instead of just running forward with tiny little pony steps are two different things.

Big canter = okay.

Fast little canter = not okay because horse jumps flat and then lands on his face.

So my last two rides have been focused on getting Bobby to move out and carry on like he's got some sort of dressage training under his belt.

if we could make his stride do this at the canter we'd be golden.

I forgot how different riding Bobby dressage than jumping is. I know it shouldn't technically be a different warm up (right Emma?), but who wants to walk for twenty minutes straight before moving on to literally anything else when you're in the jumping mindset?

After lots and lots of walking, Bobby's trot has been downright bomb ass the past two days. It's the bitchingest working trot ever--like, maybe we could actually not automatically be pinpointed as the sole awkward, ugly Thoroughbred in Second with that trot. Small wins, guys. We're working with Bobby here. STILL A SEXY TROT.

Anyway, the focus is the canter.

Although really I don't have much to say about it because it's been awesome. I put my leg on, my horse opens his stride, we're covering ground, we're not running on the forehand about to get lapped by a pony...you know, dressage training!

Sadly this means there's only one conclusion to draw here. We need to do a real, serious, get the butt engaged and the horse light up front warm up even if we're going to jump. What a pain.

had to take the "new" saddle on a test ride as
soon as i got it on friday. bobby wasn't impressed.
or even awake.

Jump lesson tomorrow. We'll see if I can stick to my guns on that.

Reflections

I probably should have brought my lap top to the show with me, handed my horse off the second we got out of the ring for our final division, and written my show recap post right then and there. I was on a serious high, clutching my blue ribbon and having a handful of yellow ribbons stuffed into my face for my over fences rounds as my barn mates surrounded me and told me how awesome we'd just done. I'd just crossed a serious goal off my list--one that up until it was tackled I wasn't entirely confident I was going to accomplish.

Then Hubby, Bobby, and I got back to the trailer to untack the hoss and stuff him with all the cookies, and Hubby offhandedly said, "You've jumped around Plantation and Bucks. This time last year you were doing Training, and everyone is telling you what a good job you just did getting over the tiniest course ever. I don't get it." I relayed that to BM while we were driving a load of those semi-feral creatures to their new home yesterday (What a fucking nightmare.), and she added, "SO was looking at the pictures and he was like, 'I thought Carly jumped the really big stuff like a badass?'"

Neither one of them meant anything mean by it of course. First of all, they're dudes. They say stupid shit all the time anyway. But neither of them was too impressed by what were pretty small jumps, and not being immersed in the horse world, they didn't really grasp the full effect of what I've gone through this year with my confidence.

BM was quick to tell me I am a badass, and while maybe we're not going Training right now, my horse is trained so much better, and when we get back there we're going to rock it because of that.

Still, a large part of me deflated. It was the tiniest course ever. I didn't even ride that well.

Then I went back and read my last two posts about the shows in this series. Back in May at the first one, I jumped one jump before bursting into tears and having to leave the ring unable to get around another fence out there. I finished that post with this:

Do we aim to do better next time? I don't know when the next time will be. I'm too scared to jump off property right now. I'm too worried about things going wrong and getting hurt again. I don't believe in my horse, even if he's proven he can be trusted to do his job. This is shaping up to be a much longer road than I anticipated.

And at the second show, a month later, I only went to school in the morning and didn't actually make it into any of the classes.

I held firm in my decision to keep this as a schooling opportunity only. My horse was a little naughty, I worked through it, and we jumped a few different jumps several times apiece OFF PROPERTY! I love satin as much as the next person, but that was a big enough win for me. Maybe I'll be ready by the next show.

I only went to cheer on barn mates for the third show as I had a dressage show that afternoon, but I vividly remember being so nervous standing at the gate waiting for W to go in for her rounds. I was dressed in shorts and muck boots, my horse wasn't even on the property, and I was getting psyched out by the jumps.

When I look back at all that, it makes it easier to feel proud of myself again. No, 2'3" isn't the most exciting thing in the world, and no, I didn't get a big open stride out of my horse or nail every distance. What I did do was make it around three separate courses, off property, with long approaches and multiple lines, and I never once got scared.

I had a smile plastered to my face going around even as we made mistakes. I was happy with my horse, happy with myself, and so thankful to BM and my whole barn family who cheered us on the entire morning.

A brain injury is an invisible thing. Confidence is an invisible thing. It's hard to see from the outside how much those things affect someone, so I have to compare myself to my own standards. I worked hard to get to that show, and I think I did the very best job for where I'm at now--not because of how well I did or didn't ride, but because I took another step toward conquering a crippling fear.

Go. Me.

Eastside Hunter Classic IV

Alas, we come to the final show in our little local hunter barn series. These shows were exactly what I needed this year to help get me jumping off property in the most low key, no pressure setting imaginable....while still also having the opportunity to get ribbons because I'm a five year old and that matters.

We emptied almost the entire barn this time around to attend, and more than half the hack division belonged to BM. It made for a little bit of a circus in the already circus setting of pre-show warm up (Hunter shows are just the silliest things ever.), but fortunately this time around I wasn't in need of hand holding from BM, and I was able to warm myself up both on the flat and over fences.

there were girls warming up for the 3' when i started warming up on the flat.
just so we don't get ahead of ourselves and think i was jumping that.

Bobby was a little tight when we first started out. He'd picked up the trot the day before like he was completely crippled, but the instant I put him together and asked him to go around like a dressage horse he was all, "Oh, my body. Riiiight, it's supposed to actually do things. Got it." and then was magically not stiff in the slightest. I employed that same tactic with the same results, and we had a pretty good prance around for ten minutes.

That also gave the tiny girls riding giant horses over big jumps the time to get in and out so that the jumps were knocked back down to weenie rider height. I started off with a couple jumps over the singles with their mile long approaches.

look at my cute pony packing me around like a happy camper

All of our homework of hunter specific course work most definitely paid off. I didn't feel the need to pull and pick to any of the singles. I maybe didn't get crazy and add the leg I needed, but we maintained a happy lope up to everything without either one of us fucking up our slow and steady rhythm.

After a few singles to get the jumping mojo going we moved on to all the lines. We worked on lines every single day last week with mixed results. Sometimes he was really good, sometimes he biffed the distance to the second jump so bad we barely made it over. Between our lesson Wednesday and a BM boot camp ride on Thursday we were back in business, and our rides Friday and Saturday were about as good as we can get right now.

when in doubt, just pull on your horse. d'oh! bobby don't care. 

The lines were so-so warming up. My canter feels like a nice steady pace, but looking at video we are so slowwww. I mean, I can tell we're not moving out at the pace we're supposed to be by any means, but it doesn't feel as slow as it actually is. That made the lines ride fine when we came in on the right distance and I sat right up (thanks, Wednesday lesson!) to make the add stride come up easy peasy. How a 17hh horse makes the add stride feel like an absolute breeze I don't know, but I'm okay with that right now.

sneaking into a line after a pony meant bobby got to just canter right over some of these

I finally felt like I'd done enough that nothing in the actual classes was going to come as a surprise to me, and that there was no reason I couldn't do the whole course at once since I'd just jumped all the elements a million times apiece. I let Bobby grab some water and a snack while I went to finish off my entry.

In the end the debate between 2'3" and 2'6" was easily decided by time. The 2'3" division was right after the hack division while the 2'6" had a whole other division between those two. For the sake of sanity for everyone in our party (Bobby, Hubby, and myself), I went with the earliest choice.

The Hack

This made-up schooling show division is four flat classes with the fourth finishing up with a trot in, canter out cross rail that everyone does individually. I used it solely to get more ribbons. Is that not the whole purpose of hunter shows? Pretty sure it is.

Since most of the division came from my barn, we were up against very correct moving horses. Maybe not the fanciest, but BM drills proper dressage work into everyone. Bobby felt braced in the first two classes. I kept trying to slip my reins out a little bit as per BM's instructions every time we passed her, but it just made him splat onto his forehand. His right lead canter departs were also atrocious for the first two classes, but there were so many of us that I think we got lucky and the judge was looking elsewhere for them.

After that though, Bobby settled down this time around instead of getting more wound up. I was able to give him a longer rein and push him along. He also figured out the PA system and started listening for instructions over the loud speaker instead of jigging while he waited in anticipation for the next command to come from me.

Our fellow dopey Thoroughbred Momo, lovingly (sometimes) referred to as Dumb Dumb, pulled a clean sweep of the whole division. BM bought him a few months ago, and even though he came in skinny and under muscled you could tell right away that he was going to clean up on the flat. He was made for hunterland.

A really cute grey got second in the first three classes before his rider mistook the canter to trot call for canter to walk, and then he had his own Dumb Dumb moment over the X that knocked him out of the running. That left room for Bobby and I, who were pinned in third in the previous three classes, to sneak into second and snag the Reserve Champion behind Momo.

bobby thinks line up is the strangest game ever.

We wrangled everyone together for pictures before I handed my ribbons off to someone (Barn mates--the most magical creatures ever. I love them and want to take them with me to every show.), and hurried down to look at my courses again since our division was getting underway. I made sure BM knew I'd need her ringside to run the courses by her since the other riders were doing their courses back to back to back and I'd have to do the same.

Again. Hunterland. You make no sense but I really do love you for things like that.

BM grabbed our champion ribbons and we had to pose for those pictures too before I quickly shoved that ribbon over to Hubby and pushed my way to the ring when I saw one of the other trainers taking off her student's martingale as she was heading in the ring. I don't know much about this sport, but I do know that signals flat time and I hadn't done my rounds yet.

Fortunately the ring steward-type person knew I was in there too so after apologizing for being all of half a second tardy even though nobody seemed to care, into the ring we went!

Jumpy Jump Time

We only had to do seven fences for the first two classes because I was in the lowest jump division, and baby horses and/or chicken shit riders don't need to get overwhelmed. First up was the inside single with it's long approach that the last time we were here I almost pulled Bobby to a stop in front of before he hopped over because he's the best and then I had to stop because I was so scared.

not this time, wishing well!

I turned in knowing I was so prepared and ready for this approach. I sat chilly on my loping mule beast and we hopped over from a nice western pleasure canter while BM called out, "GALLOP, Carly!! Faster! Faster!!" When we were all done, she was like, "I didn't think you could hear me." No, BM. I could hear you just fine. I was ignoring you because the slowest canter known to man is my happy place right now.

Bobby was having a serious right lead canter aversion Sunday, and he didn't want to give me that change for anything. He didn't even want to land on that lead despite my half-assed attempts.

ok, but if i steer you into the standard coming out of the line and lean to the right,
you should just land on the right, bobby. 

It made for not pretty turns where we either fought over the change, or I just opted not to fight and let him continue on the wrong lead--or both. Because that is a winning mentality! Really though, I was just in there to get around the jumps. I knew we weren't going to be competitive, and I didn't care in the slightest. I was competing against myself and my crazy brain.

sorry these pictures suck. my camera is the worst.

After our first course with no mishaps besides the lead issue, I made sure I knew my course before BM sent me off with, "Go out there and move it! Use your voice if you want him to wait. Now gallop!"

LOL, obviously that did not happen, and the only time I let him out of our barely-there canter was through the red line and he weeble-wobbled down it in confusion. Bobby and I like slow now, okay? But look at us messing up and not caring--getting over the jumps anyway and finishing laughing because who cares what it looked like, we did it!

The final course was the stake class which basically meant "Jump this 2' coop as your first fence and then do the entire course this time."

It was uneventful, but in a good way. Bobby popped out a little uh...special from the green line, but I made sure I fixed our biffed distance into the burgundy line.

wheee!

I finished with big pats for the pony, and from all the way across the ring I could hear BM yell, "YOU FINISHED! THAT IS SUCH A WIN!"

thanks, britches. 

We stayed in the ring for the flat, and instead of thinking we were still doing the jumping, Bobby floated around on a loose rein chill as could be and won the class against our two other competitors.

best part of hunter shows. give me your satin, small child.

I have some thoughts on the whole experience I'll share in another post, but fuck yeah for going out there and not letting those little jumps get the best of us this time! I can write a mile long list of things we need to work on, but right now I'm just going to celebrate that win.

Hunter Show Spoiler

Because somehow I got wrangled into helping BM move a herd of semi-feral horses to their new barn today, so a full recap will have to come tomorrow!

In short though?

he kept his shit (mostly) together for the hack division this time around

which earned us reserve champion behind our stablemate and fellow dumb ottb momo!

and we made it around all three courses (!!!!!!!) before winning the flat