Jump All The Things!

As mentioned earlier I took the mare cross country schooling this weekend.  It was her first time out and our coach could not make it.  Since our first event is in under a month I figured that it was imperative to get out ad find out how she was going to do.  So we loaded up and headed out to Minds Eye Ranch (about 1.5 hrs north) since our local course didn't open until Sunday.

It was not an ideal day weather wise.  It was overcast and windy as we tacked up and then because it's Alberta and MOTHER Nature likes to laugh at us it started to snow as we were warming up.  So we were all a little wet and a whole lot of cold.

Eventers do it in the snow!

Despite the weather she was a rockstar!  Considering we have had major problems with run-outs this winter I was a little apprehensive but my goal was to make it fun and be successful to build our confidence.  We had  few stops that were more a stutter than stop.  I've been working so hard on interrupting the run-out that sometimes we just peter out of energy.  So we backed up a few strides and she always went on the second go and then we didn't have anymore trouble with that fence.  All of our issues seemed to be at the little fences.  The few bigger ones we jumped were problem free.  Perhaps she's just a snob about little fences.

We schooled the ditch, with only minimal pony-club kicking necessary and went up and down the banks without a fuss. We jumped all the Pre-Entry fences and about half of the Entry fences and I called it a day since she blew my expectations out of the water.

We are heading to Beaumont this weekend with our coach this weekend to school again.  I hope that I can successfully school all the Entry fences and perhaps some of the Pre-Training fences since I would ideally like to do Entry at our first event.