Doing the thing at 1m

Ben and I redeemed ourselves at Majestic Oaks yesterday. Well, I redeemed myself, he did that Friday at Sweet Dixie. The Majestic Oaks jumper shows are just so low key and so fun that it is hard to stress about them. It's also the venue we go to the most. Which means that even though their standards and fill are fun (to humans) and spooky (to horses), Ben has been around their course more than a couple of times and no longer eyeballs things inside or outside the ring. 

We drove through some rain on the way and it had turned into a misting/spitting rain situation by the time we arrived, but it all cleared in time for Ms. GY and I to get on our ponies. Ben felt a little stuck and behind my leg in the warm up ring. We did a few gallops forward and then coming back to lift with power to remedy that and it was mostly fixed by the time JT got there to put us over some jumps. He only stuck to one, but felt great to the rest. We headed into the ring and did a 3' class first. 

JT described this as "ride him like you don't like him much." She said it won't always have to be this way, but for now, he NEEDS to learn that he MUST go over the jump, so when in doubt, spurs in and ride forward. He sucked back a bit, in a way only I could feel, to the one stride. So spur in and a growl and he went over it smoothly. Maybe some of that feeling was my own one stride demons coming to haunt me? Either way, we got it done. 

And then took a short break, jumped a larger oxer in warm up, and went back in for our meter round. And we did it!! The rails were times that I needed to stretch up and balance a bit more while maintaining the forward, but that will come with time. By the last line of a two stride to a three stride, I felt like he was trustworthy and I did stretch up and balance better in that. 

It felt really good to go out there and get it done. I am not a worrier exactly, but it did shake my confidence to have our failure at Sweet Dixie, so this felt like putting another deposit in the bank for both of us. 

Next up is a bit of a break for him while I go out of town, and then back to it for a recognized training at Ocala with JT the second weekend in October. If I had not been planning on a week long trip, I would have tried to see if I could make it work for that, but Ocala is spookier in stadium and NOT messing around on their cross country, with some pretty challenging combinations out there. It will be good for both of us to have JT take him around there.