My Horse Is Brilliant

So after having three days off due to crappy weather, I brought Ben down for my jumping lesson last night. I lunged him in the indoor and then got on only for my trainer to say "Lord Creek (the event this weekend) is really hilly, so I'm going to open the gates and you guys can just extend the ring so you're doing your flatwork up and down hill."

Fabulous, Ben has had three days off and the first thing we're doing is going up and down hill and in order to do that, we needed to jump the small ditch every time. He was actually fairly good about the actual jumping but there were four of us in the lesson so he was getting excited and we had a little bit of random bucking.

He ended up settling down eventually and then we started jumping the big ditch which he was also good about. Then we started warming up over a couple of jumps, and then we put a course together.

The course was a jump on the center line, left hand turn and up the diagonal to an oxer, out over the big ditch (which is about 2 1/2 feet wide), over a tiny little rail out on the grass, back downhill into the ring and over a vertical, right 90 degree turn to the center jump, left 90 degree turn to a drop fence out of the ring, over the house jump, up the hill, down the bank, back in over the big ditch, and over the jump in the center again. Quite a long jumper derby style course. Ben has never jumped any of the cross country fences except the ditch and the bank. He had never been over the drop fence or over the house jump. We were sent out first. Everything was going just fine until we came up to the house and he slammed on the brakes. I assumed he was just surprised by the fence being there, until he stopped two more times.

Finally I walked right up to the fence, only to see that there was a chair on the other side that nobody had seen prior. Somebody had brought it out there to sit while they grazed their horses and never moved it. So they moved the chair and over Ben went without an issue. So that is why my horse is brilliant. He made me so proud and made me feel so safe that he knew something was wrong and wouldn't take any chances.

So then we went through the course again without any issues:

He was a very good boy and we are very excited about Sunday!

Quite A Few Updates...

Well, I have been very bad at blogging lately... Ooooops!

So, because there is so much to write about, I figured that I would just limit myself to a small paragraph per topic... This might be difficult!

1. The last thing I wrote about was the CDCTA dressage show where we did very well. We were supposed to continue on to Frazier Farm Horse Trials on August 7th, but we ended up scratching when we awoke to pouring rain. Normally, I would just push on and go, but Frazier doesn't have fantastic footing on the best of days, so I decided it was safer to save Ben's legs and pass. So next up is Lord Creek Horse Trials coming up this Sunday.

2. Speaking of Lord Creek Horse Trials, I took Ben schooling there on Friday. We just stayed in the top field because the course is obviously closed but there is a pretty nice stadium course and a few xc fences in the top field. He was a little excited and a little bucky but settled in pretty well and was jumping great. And then, the trainer who teaches us there was nice enough to drive me down to the xc course to show me the newest addition to the Novice course... a ditch and wall. Oh great. I really do think that he will be fine though because the ditch is small and kind of just acts like an extended groundline. I'd be surprised if he even noticed it. Regardless, I'm going to keep my crop at the ready just in case...

3. Just a quick note too: For some bizarre and annoying reason, Blogger is not allowing me to make comments on my posts. Therefore, if you leave me a comment I can't respond. I promise I see them though! And if you ever want to ask me a question or something, I will answer it/respond to it in a post. Sorry about that guys!

4. Looking back on my posts, I realized I never did write a post about the barn we are going to which I can't believe because I am so incredibly excited about it! We are officially moving on September 3rd. It is a brand spanking new 4-stall barn that is literally 5 minutes from the barn we are at now. All the stalls have two windows that open and have custom drop down fronts so they can stick their heads out when we want them to be able to. The stalls are 12 x 12 and matted. Every stall has its own locker for tack storage and such and I swear it is bigger than my closet. I can probably fit four of me inside it comfortably. They are nice enough to let us keep our trailer there too which is always a nice thing to be able to do. There is a heated viewing area for the ring and a heated bathroom which is a huge improvement from where we are now because we don't even have a bathroom at our current barn.

Now I am going to break my one paragraph rule because I'm just too excited about this barn! The ring is 100 x 200 and its going to be fully lighted and have rubber footing. There are huge grass turnouts and a wash stall. The hay loft has drop doors over every stall so you can just grab the hay and drop it in. The stalls have webcams in them so you can just go online and check in on your horse whenever they are inside. Ahh, so excited! There will definitely be many many pictures when we do move!

Hmm, I feel like there is so much more to write about because I haven't posted in so long but I'm blanking on all of the things that I wanted to talk about. Oh well, it will come to me later. I'm off to the barn to muck and practice my quarter mark skills because I would love to be able to show off Ben's awesome butt. Its been pouring here all day so no riding and poor horsies have been inside all day. I promise I will try to be better about posting! If all else fails, I will defintely be wearing my helmet cam this Sunday and there will be a post about the event!

Thanks for reading!