Out and About

With show season just around the corner, Cadence and I have been trying to get off property & get some stadium schooling done. Unfortunately, a combination of awful weather & busy schedules has prevented us from going xc yet, but I'm trying my best to limit how much I complain about the weather, so lets move on.
We were able to trailer out for a SJ school last Sunday, in spite of the rather cold (read: below freezing) and very wet weather, and hopefully we'll be able to head over to another friends farm this Friday to get some more jumping work in Although we have jumps at home, we don't really have the capacity to set courses & such out, so these spring stadium schools are really important for us to practice our course work!

Last Sunday's school actually went really well. There were 3 large puddles in the farm's jumper ring (which conveniently had the nicest footing of all of their outdoors that day) but aside from that the footing was actually quite nice- well drained & not sloppy at all. So we just avoided the puddles (at first at least) and started our warm up. Cadence had decided that the one end of the ring, where the jump cart & a wheelbarrow were located, was clearly trying to eat her... so we spent most of our warm ip focusing on that corner. Cadence is a bit unique in that if she has an issue with something, the ONLY way to address it is immediately. You probably won't be able to convince her that whatever she's worrying about is undeserving of her mistrust or consternation, but at least you stand a chance. If you ignore the issue and attempt to continue her work in another area, she uses the time to build up her fear and anxiety to epic proportions, so if you plan on staying on... scary objects/corners must be addressed immediately.
Anyway, mare-face warmed up a bit jittery but sane. We had breaks & steering, so what more can you ask for? The actual jumping part went pretty well too. We started off just jumping one fence on a circle until that was sane, and them moved on to some course work. The first two courses were acceptable, but not exactly put together. However, after that Cadence and I seemed to hit our stride, literally and figuratively. We did hairpin turns, intense roll-backs, awesome angled fences, and I gave up on avoiding the puddles so we splashed straight through those too :) The only real issue we had was that Cadence really wanted to lay on me, especially on that right rein, and it took some pretty harsh corrections to get her off of it. Overall though it was a really great school & affirmed my decision to ride in a jumper show or two this summer!

*as a side note, all of this was typed on my phone. Sorry for the general lack of editing (not that ver edit this to begin with) & for all the typos that are probably in here!