Jumper Night

Saturday was the barn's jumper night which all five hundred of us (it was actually around thirty total, but it felt like that many) bravely showed up for despite the massive winter storm blowing outside. I'd signed us up for the 18" and 2'--dependent upon success at the lower level. 

What I didn't realized was how small 18" is and how much bigger we've actually been jumping. While I notice when there's a bigger outlier of a jump--when I've got a course set up at 2'3" and pop something up to 2'6" or 2'9"--I don't notice the height so much anymore when they're all set the same. The 2'6" division looked downright normal, and had I not already been on poor Dopie for close to three hours at that point and he was telling me he was done, we would have finished over those jumps instead. 

"2' is too easy, lady"

Our first round at 18" he started off so slow and lazy. He came around to the oxer for the first time and slammed to a halt completely from being in la la land and not paying attention. I gave him a couple spanks behind my leg and he turned on the crazy instead. 

BM let all of us do the jump off courses even if we didn't go clear, and that was a bit of a rodeo. Fortunately by round two he had settled into a happy medium.

I was happy with how well he was starting to land his leads and try the flying changes as an answer for the wrong lead. I didn't get after him too much as I do a lot of circling and schooling to work on the leads when I'm by myself and this wasn't the place or time for that. 

He got a sixth and a third for two out of the three 18" classes. 

We went first in all the classes we did so after a quick w/t to warm back up at the end of the 18" division he got to go right out and jump again. The added height was still a snooze fest so he was pretty lazy with his legs and had one down, but was overall a good boy.

He then had to wait for ten rounds to go before going back out for the jump off. When I asked him to step out of the line up, he threw a bit of a tantrum so despite planning on doing the whole division I decided he could finish on this round. It was 9:30 at that point and I had been on since around six. 

He ended up with a fifth for that class and got to go back to the rest of his dinner and a bunch of carrots. 

The last jumper night we did, I bowed out at this height because there were a few 2'6" fences mixed in and I left like Opie was way too overfaced. This time I wanted more height by the end. With his dressage getting stronger and stronger, jumping him just gets easier and easier. Plus we've been playing over fences more in the off season now than ever before, and he's really starting to figure out legs and listening. 

I'm kind of thinking of doing a little BN event at some point this year if we can find one to fit in, and can find the time to keep up with the jumping between aiming for dressage domination!