Sunday, July 18, 2010

Stanton Farms Jumping Derby

Three jumping rounds- one jumpers, one cross country, and one stadium. No refusals, no poles down. A hugely successful day for the baby horse!

Instead of a dressage test, there was a jumpers round to start. In order for everyone to get ranked, whoever went the fastest set optimum time regardless of faults. Everyone else got time faults- every second over optimum time counted as a fault. Of course it would have been completely unfair of me to ask Jasper for speed and tight turns, so I rode it as a hunter course, used the whole arena, and tried to give him as long of an approach as I could to each fence. Sometimes it wasn't much as the course was curvy and there were some tight lines... but he got himself over everything often with room to spare. We had tons of time faults. Some of the jumps were completely covered with flowers which was new.

Round 1- Jumpers


The second phase was cross country. It was a nice course, inviting, and there was a very small bank, water, and a big deep dark ditch. I think Jasper realized it was a ditch after his front feet had already left the ground and it scared him. It was kind of like a cork coming out of a champagne bottle. The rest of the course rode really well, there were some some spooky things and he chose to trot into some of the fences but didn't suck back or act like he was going to refuse. It's almost like he just wanted more time to get a better look at things.

Cross Country



The last phase was a stadium round based on the rules for eventing. This round felt way better than the first.

Stadium



And Roxie was there for her first jumping show! Jasper recognized her from when we went to take a lesson with Betty last week. It was love at second sight and he had small fits of bucking and kicking in place when she left him. Which meant he stayed tied to the trailer longer than normal on multiple occasions. Hopefully her mom will post her videos because she was SUPER CUTE.

My parents and niece came to watch, my dad has become quite the videographer and took all the videos. We got a picture taken at the end of the show:

Ummmmmmm...

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Hopeful Pics & Stanton Farms Derby this weekend...

A few pics from the Hopeful HT...





He looks so shiny! And you can't see the giant bald spots and teeth marks all over his butt from when I tried to turn him out in the big field with all the other horses for a couple of days.

Serena and I are heading down to the Stanton Farm Derby this weekend. No dressage, all jumping. I'm not exactly how it all works, but the first round is a jumping round based on time and faults. I think there is a jump off if you go clean. Then a cross country round, then a stadium round based on the rules for eventing.

Jasper's had quite a bit of time off in the last couple of weeks. I plan on riding the stadium like hunter rounds (well, if you've seen us go maybe not hunter rounds exactly... but using the whole arena, hopefully a nice steady pace, and giving him a good approach to everything).

On another note, I had a jumping lesson with Betty Hirst last week. I started riding lessons with her when I was in the 3rd grade. I rode with her (on her lesson horses and then on my horse Mindy) through high school and hadn't been back in 15 years. It was crazy how much things were the same, so many memories from that place. Jasper was great and did his first bounces. She commented that he's pretty brave, apparently he didn't look at one of the jumps that a lot of other horses do.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Aspen Horse Trials XC & Stadium Videos

The video arrived from Aspen today, yay! Both rides look about like they felt- XC was sketchy at first and then smoothed out. Awesomely smoothed out. Stadium started out sketchy and stayed that way. Ugh. Those fences look huge to me even in the video. He doesn't seem to have trouble with the actual height, but man they were intimidating and you can tell by how he leaps over everything. I think it proves how much heart he has! What a good boy. I do have a tiny bit of guilt, I think he was overfaced and maybe I should have pulled out. If I had, though, we wouldn't have gotten a chance to go XC as the stadium round was first... I don't think he was scarred too much as we had a pretty decent stadium round two weeks later at the Hopeful trials.



Stadium



Cross Country

Videos by Moving Images NW