On Saturday Jet's division ran. He had a very mediocre dressage followed by a very mediocre show jumping. His nerves were getting the best of him and when that happens he tightens his back and goes badly. I was a bit discouraged with him and with myself for not being able to ride him through it. He made up for it on cross country, though. He jumped around beautifully over the straightforward jumps on the course and was a little bit surprised by the more difficult combinations that you find at intermediate, but was still honest and jumped right through them. I felt it was an educational run for him. He will run next at Plantation Field in early June and we will aim for a CCI** in the fall.
Today Monte went at novice level. With a steady test he was in the ribbons after dressage. After show jumping I was jumping for joy. He jumped clean and he was actually clever with his feet! Monte has so much power but it is taking him awhile to get it all coordinated. This was his first clean show jumping round in competition. On cross country I gave him a 50%/50% chance of jumping clean, and the bad 50% won. He stopped dead in front of two jumps and spun away, both because they were funny looking jumps. One was a bench and the other was a log on top of a hill with no sight of the landing. In both cases he jumped the second time, once he got a look at them. On the rest of the course he seemed to be having fun. This winter I tried to move him up to training level when he wasn't quite ready and I am paying for it now by having to spend more time building his confidence and showing him different types of jumps. It looks like he will do another novice at Plantation Field and then perhaps we will look for a training level.
In other news, my student Holley Russell won her division of Elementary at the Bucks County Horse Park today. Congratulations Holley! We are also all getting geared up for the Bucks County Horse Park schooling shows this summer as well as other schooling horse trials. Please join us!
Ashley
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