Looong video filled recap coming with lots of raving about how lovely Butterball is. If I were a better blogger I'd probably trail the media out for longer, but ah well.
It actually went pretty well. So then we started jumping. "Don't help him!" Get the canter, keep the canter, let him make whatever decision he's going to. It's his responsibility. Okay cool. I could feel Butterball learning I was neither going to fix things nor f- them up for him. He started backing himself off and taking that lovely gappy spot and jumping the snot out of things. The jumps were mostly 2'ish, but he was making a very good effort.
Then I got dance mom coaching to use the whole stage. Go straight away from the fences, go to the rail, don't ask for the change until you're close to the rail. And wouldn't ya know it, taking my time out in the corners gave me time to check in with three canter, making that same easy pace.
DH came to watch and we'd gone through what happens when I "jesus take the wheel" before the fence on the drive down. And the first thing is actually the frantic darting eyes then I shove the reins. I was able to mostly avoid that droppping feel by gluing my eyes to the same spot and riding the canter rhythm. Then the pony got it right most of the time. How cool??
PW warned me we might not place well because we weren't going to be going on stride. He said "it's training" to keep that same steady pace down the lines and add because that's what his flowing steady stride fits in.
Friday started quite early. I finally got smart and tied a hay bag in the tree we use as a tie post for bathing. This kept Butterball much happier with his early morning bath. And much more still while I was trying to get his stockings white.
When we got there I wasn't really sure how to go about learning three courses, but lucky for me the first and third were the same. And really, since there are inside and outside lines, the hunter courses seem a lot easier to learn than jumpers. We warmed up on the flat by ourselves and were ready to jump when PW headed over from the jumper ring. Things went swimmingly off the right lead, but we had a big 'ole right drift off the left lead. Huh. Probably about my turn and weight in my stirrups.
After a vertical off both leads and then an oxer, we headed in for our first course. The first few jumps I tried so hard not to help him. They were both a bit funky, a gap to the first and a chip to the second. And then we got our flow and the rest of it went pretty smoothly. The outside line by the judges stand was a 5, but we planned on adding to make it 6. The other two lines were 6 and we planned on adding to make them 7. The adds actually felt a bit tight because I was trying to woah while in two point and it while it wasn't incredibly effective it was effective enough to fit in the desired number of strides.
After the first round, PW went over a few changes. We got tsked at for not making it past the in gate before trotting at the end, oops. PW also wanted me to use my stage better and go straighter after the fences and wait until closer to the rail to ask for the changes. We improved those things a bit for the second round.
And then the third round we decided to let him flow down the lines to do the on stride.
PW added us to the under saddle after our third trip, which I hadn't planned on doing, but ended up being a good idea. Our hack could have been MUCH smoother on my part since I have never schooled walk-canter and canter-walk on a loose rein. So there was a lot of trotting between those. But apparently his drool worthy trot is enough to make up for that since we ended up FIRST in pretty good company. Good boy Mr. Fancy Pants.
We got a fifth, fourth, and second for our over fences trips one through three respectively. The first two trips were much less smooth and we didn't do the on stride in the lines. Then we had a late change behind on the last trip that probably hurt us. He'd been giving me auto changes so I hadn't even needed to think about the changes, but was a bit tired the last trip. He did tidy it up when I used my LEG (wow, look at that, not my hand) to ask him to get his haunches with the program.
PW, my friends who were cheering us on (and loaned us pad and bridle to look the part), and I were all delighted. PW said "THIS is exactly where he needs to be." I actually LAUGHED during one of my courses. I can't remember the last time I've felt relaxed enough to do that. And Butterball felt SO DARN HAPPY without me micromanaging him. And y'know what? He can make pretty darn good choices without me shoving him at fences. I do think there was a degree of no expectations to the day, so everything felt like a giant win, but even that aside, I agree with PW that for now this is the place we need to be. PW felt like eventually we could step up to the 3' hunters and do the on strides there without a problem too.
Saturday we entered the 2'6" hunter derby. We had a real world HJ moment when PW was supposed to be in the jumper ring taking 2 horses around the 1.15m while I was supposed to be warming up for the derby. He conferred with both in gates and ended up heading over to jumper land. I had not brought my phone with me (rookie mistake) and didn't find the shade for a while, so we roasted for a bit while waiting. Butterball was a very good sport and cuddled for a bit, napped, tried to eat the railing, and tried to say hello to any horse that came near us.
Once PW came back over we popped over a few fences and then headed in.
My brain wasn't totally engaged, it was 6 strides from 2-3 which we did swimmingly. But when I came up the diagonal from 6-7 I COMPLETELY forgot to kick a bit the first two strides to make it an easy 7. So instead we had 7.5. Oops. The rest of the round was pretty decent though. We took the high options each time.
We got a 70 on this round.
Then we went back in for the derby. Again, brain wasn't completely engaged and when PW told me canter for four strides after 7 then trot, I cantered for 4 strides and then started thinking about trotting. So we didn't actually trot the trot fence, we just slow cantered it. We ended with a score of 60. This put us in second of two. But y'know what's cool?? They still handed out prize money! So BB and I won $110 in the class! And the course was probably the smoothest I've ever done.
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| Photo by ESI |
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| I may go put all his ribbons up on his reins at some point, it is definitely the most we've gotten from one show. But I wasn't willing to try too hard to get a good picture when he'd been such a champ, tacked up for about three hours at this point. |
He got hosed off and put away for a bit with a fresh flake of orchard grass hay. Then it was time to get ready for the costume relay class. Teams consisted of three members - each did 5 jumps. The first 5 at 0.6m, the second 5 at 0.9m, and the last 5 at 1m. Our team was the Wizard of Oz (there was a second Wizard of Oz themed team too).
The program said baton pass, but fortunately someone had decided that wasn't going to be a good plan. They changed it to the next rider starts from by the last fence of the rider before as soon as the feet touch down. So we got our positions planned and got to it. He motored right down the lines on stride again even though the fences were little. He also is pretty darn careful when ridden this way, which meant my fear of being the sole member of our team to have a rail wasn't realized, thank goodness. We finished up second place in the relay and won some money there too!!
Overall this was the most fun I've had at a horse show since Kentucky last year. I don't know if that means we need to go back to eventing or if it means our place is in the hunters, but I'm embracing it whatever it is. I do find it funny that my childish view of hunter riders just "doing nothing" is kinda sorta true with this horse. But the backwards rationalization part of my brain thinks about how much training we've put in and how much work we've done with his canter to get him balanced so that I can just keep light contact and let him sort it out. I gotta say though, he makes far better decisions than I do most of the time. Giving him that responsibility and having him do such a good job feels pretty cool.
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