My last post was technically "sent" on the 11th - though I forgot to hit "post" until today - so there is that. The indoor arena #strugfest2015 has continued. I didn't ride Friday - I had a potential saddle buyer meeting me on Saturday morning, so Drew and I trooped out Saturday morning. The girl bought the saddle (YAY DOLLARZ!) and Drew lunged the Fox while I got BB tacked up to jump. I set up something similar to the run-and-jump exercise from the Lucinda Green clinic two years ago, but someone came in to lunge, so my run and jump became more of a turn and jump. Bailey warmed up great and had some serious hops over the warm up fences. By then Drew had appeared (he had to blanket and turn out his horse) and he had fun making the jumps as scary as he could - BB jumped them with no problem, like the silly red star she is. One was an uneven oxer with miscellaneous poles added on and under, while the other was, at first, a single vertical with no fill. Drew added some fill ( a very scary gate that wasn't in cups, just leaning against the standards) and put it up and off we went.
Outside, Bailey was much better about taking the longer distances, though she got up the butt of the vertical a handful of times, nearly unseating me. I'm thankful she's generally honest and didn't buck me off while I was up on her neck dicking around. I also needed my martingale hardcore (my face is, however, in pristine condition thanks to it) and was wishing for more bit. Once the gate got added to the vertical, she started to duck down right before (like 1-2 strides out, max) and stall out/jump it SUPER awkwardly because OMG scary thing. With one hit/knock down of the gate (which gave me whiplash because Bailey bolted on the backside) I finally got to riding more aggressively and got her over it much more smoothly with a couple of clucks and a few well timed taps behind my leg with the whip. Not only did I feel like a bad ass jumping the big jump with one hand, but Bailey soared over it with absolutely no problems.
Red horse has got some hops!
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