Lesson video!

http://youtu.be/GIfnJGMdvsQ 

Hopefully that works. 2 stride to 3 stride. Both of which George has never done. Thanks Chelsea!

Lessons with Sally Cousins

Friday, George and I took a show jumping lesson with the amazing Sally Cousins. Megan and I drove an hour and a half to Pine Grove then another hour south to Walnut Hill Farm in Manheim for a lesson with a 4* rider. It was a very long drive, but it was absolutely worth it. 

  We warmed up during the end of the previous lesson, to Sally's surprise, George the half draft had a fabulous canter, and was not as green over fences as I had made him out to be.

 Things I learned from my lesson::

1: Anticipate the possibilities. If your jump is along a wood line, your horse will run out away from it. Figure out the most likely problem and prepare for it. He's a big horse. Once he makes up his mind, you can't stop his decision. You must plan for all possibilities and hope you make the correct choice. 

2: Don't be afraid to go wide with your hands. A green horse is much easier to direct with wide hands and its easier to prevent runouts. 

         Photo credit Chelsea Larson

George getting well deserved pats for his super performance in his lesson.  

George Goes To Bucks County

A little behind on the posting again, but I was waiting for a certain someone to edit and post photos from the schooling trial George and I completed at BCHP. It's no fun to have posts without photos! (still waiting.... BOYFRIEND!) I only have one at the moment, so you readers will have to be satisfied with that until I can get my greedy little hands on more. 

      Photo credit Jeremy Benfield

That was a lovely snapshot from George's dressage test that had us tied for first in BN. Woohoo! It was a super steady and obedient test. WAY better than the fiasco at Burgundy Hollow. 

The rest of the day was a little hairy. We had one stop and a time fault in stadium, followed by 3 refusals and time XC. Bummer. Dropped us all the way down to last place. Well, second to last, someone was eliminated. Lol. I was a little disappointed, but can't really blame George. He's still very green over fences and tends to get distracted by the jump judges on XC, then is surprised when there is a jump in front of him he wasn't expecting. Whoops! 

Which brings me to the next bit of news. George and I will be having a show jumping lesson this Friday, the 13th, with the one and only Sally Cousins!!!!! I'm very excited and reasonably nervous even though we're still a few days away. Fingers crossed I don't make an @$$ out of myself. I've not done much riding this month and haven't jumped since the trial... This should be interesting!

Boo boo Updates

It's been a long, slow month of stall rest, bandage changes, and hand grazing. His stifle wound is pretty much non existent, with a little nubbin of flesh that didn't fall off with the rest of the flap. 

WARNING!! Booboo pictures ahead!

   Day of injury to about 3 weeks after

Looks pretty good, right? The one on his hock has taken a bit longer to look decent. He likes to lay down and/or roll EVERY SINGLE DAY and tends to slip his bandage. 

           Pictures up until last week

He's been chilling without a bandage during the day to encourage scabbing and more healing. The vet comes out on Thursday and will hopefully give us the go ahead to start back to work. I can't wait to get back in the saddle! We've lost so much time due to injuries since I adopted him. But you know what they say, best laid plans... Boo. Here's to a better future!

Don't Ever Tell Your Horse....

That he's about to go back to work. Let him be oblivious. Cuz you know what happens when you tell him? He goes out in his pasture and does this::: 

Warning: if you are grossed out by wounds and/or blood, you probably shouldn't read any further

And this::::

Which looks like this after the vet cuts off the skin flap

Awesome, right? He managed to wound himself on two major joints. The vet flushed his stifle to make sure he hadn't punctured or otherwise damaged the joint capsule. Everything was clear, so fingers crossed it stays that way. Looks like a whole lot of boo boo scrubbing in my future. Darn dollar horse is EXPENSIVE. 

Another Schooling Day

On Sunday we took George out to BCHP for some more XC schooling. If everything went smoothly he would be entered in the schooling trial on August 11. Bucks uses a ditch at the BN level with no option, so we needed to make sure he would go over the ditch before I paid his entry. It took a couple tries and a few awkward hops, but now ditches are not a problem! 

      99 problems, but a ditch ain't one!

We schooled a bunch of other BN level fences, mainly the scary ones, so hopefully there will be no refusals this time! 

                    A scary bench

                  And scary steps

      And a not so scary hanging log with         terrifying giant boulders on either side

I'm feeling pretty confident about the cross country phase, dressage should be fine if I can remember the test, and stadium..... Well, I had a bit of a melt down yesterday when I remembered that BN = the addition of some scary fill under the jumps. 

This was me demonstrating how I would ride to this scary rolltop back in 2012 with Theo

Stay tuned!

On a More Cheerful Note...

At the end of July, while simultaneously prepping Reffy for some more dressagey fun at Burgundy Hollow, I was also prepping someone else for his first BN trial. 

          That's right! George is back! 

              Photo cred. Megan Allen

The original plan was to go Starter, considering he's really only jumped maybe 5 or 6 times, but he totally killed it when we took him up to school XC the week before, so we made the decision to go Beginner Novice instead. 

Now, George is a funny kind of guy. Trot towards a jump and there's a pretty good chance he's going to stop. Or run out. But kick on and canter up? 9 chances out of 10 you're up and over before he could even think about putting on the brakes. He gets all his confidence for jumping at the canter. Our game plan was officially "ride like hell". 

Day Of:

Because of scheduling and me having zero time between phases due to also riding Reffy, we walked the XC course as soon as we arrived at Burgundy Hollow. Cue mild panic attack. They had thrown straw all over some of the bigger fences making them even more scary. And they just happened to be fences we hadn't schoole because they were off the course to be repainted. GASP. 

         No problem. We got this. Ha. 

Dressage was mediocre, George decided staring at the horses out on the XC course was more important than paying attention and not hauling me around the silly white rectangle. I think our score had us in 3rd place. Not too shabby. We had a rail down on the first fence of stadium before I swallowed my nerves and rode like hell! That's fine. Green jumper. Good boy. Cross country was a bit of a mess to start, two refusals in the first 4 or 5 fences, but we got it together and finished the rest of the course, INCLUDING the dreaded green table with straw spread all over it. Woohoo!!! 

We didn't win by any stretch, finished 5th overall in front of one rider who was eliminated. But I was still proud! And many awesome photos were taken. 

       Determined jump face for stadium

         Photo cred. Jeremy Benfield

      Photo cred. Karla Dreisbach 

         Photo cred. Karla Dreisbach

     Huffing and puffing all the way home

        Photo cred. Jeremy Benfield 

YAY GEORGE!!!