She Sizzles Over All the Jumps

My horse has a butt. I do not. But Aztec Diamond breeches help.

Some of you who are my facebook friends already know I had quite the weekend with my Bacon horse. We had our first jumper show ever and it was a blast! I am bypassing the write up about our experience last Sunday to write about the fun we had this weekend!

Warm up over the flowery oxer.

Courses make me nervous. Very very nervous. No particular reason why, but they just do. I think the fact that I don't get to ride them very often has a play in this, as does my memorization skills. My memory and brain thinking has taken a large dive with this stupid Lyme disease. I use to have a somewhat photographic memory and now it is gone. Oh, and asthma attacks. I didn't want to have any of those either.

I swear that thing looked bigger on my horse.

Friday, Redheadlins and I went to the warm up. Bacon came off the trailer quite nicely, as this facility is only about 10 minutes away from my house. We threw her bridle on and walked over to the arenas. I really had no idea what I was doing, so I just dinked around in the big arena on the side of the jumper arena until trainer S yelled at me to get in and jump the jumps. I looked around and most of them were set to 3'3" or 3'6". I felt my pulse rise, but then they put most of the jumps down. Phew!

Nervous face.

She wanted me to jump the tricky lines to make sure we could do them. One was a triple on the outside line, with a giant 3'3" oxer coming right out of a corner. It blew my mind and I stared at it hard. And so did Bacon. So, we had our first ever stop. And then I did it again, and she did it again. Finally, we came around to it, I didn't look at it and kicked and Bacon and I got over it. Not in a pretty way, but we did. And then they lowered the first pole in the oxer, and we went through the whole triple. The stops played with my mind a little bit, but I still felt ok.

Launching.

Saturday morning I woke up at 4am and jittered around the house before leaving at 9:30am. Husband held onto Bacon while I looked at the two courses and tried to wrap my head around them. All of the people around me were talking about this jump, and that jump and this line and it was destroying my confidence. I was lost looking at the course map and looking at the jumps. And then this angel floated towards me. It was trainer S. She asked if I needed help and I said YES PLEASE. And she went over the course with me. I tried so hard to memorize course A. Soon, we got the call for the 2'9" riders and off we went.

Through the outside line.

We took the first rail down. That made my nerves worse but I kept going, trying to remember my next jump. We got through the course, with maybe another rail down, and I was a little upset with myself. I like being "good" right off the bat and I wasn't up to my standards. I pouted, shook it off and tried to remember my next course. As I was going over it, I was told it was my turn to jump course B. WHAT. I don't even know it yet! So I tried my best to remember it and out we went again.

Sometimes we don't touch the jumps.

Sometimes she had to save my ass over the jumps.

And again, we took the first rail down. Damnit. And then another rail. And then we kept going, and finished strong. I felt like that one rode a little better than the first. Blake was mad at Bacon for taking rails, but I sure wasn't helping. I was so pleased with Bacon though, and she jumped everything and would stand quietly and take naps in between classes. After the arena was watered and dragged, I went out to the warm up ring and jumped a few jumps to wake my horse up and went into the arena. This time, I looked up and kicked to the first jump and didn't take it down. And then we went through the whole thing and and came out clean. I was thrilled, but this meant I needed to remember my jump off! I went through it in my mind and thought I had it. Off we went and somewhere took one rail down. But I was just happy to make it to the jump off.

Sometimes we looked like we knew what we were doing.

Hind end for the win.

I don't really remember all of the details of my 3'0" rounds other than they were better than my 2'9" rounds. The jumps looked bigger and they added another jump in to make a triple (which was really fun) and at one point I messed up because there were red plates on the right side of some of the jumps and I was in the eventing mind set and thought they should be jumped the other way. Thankfully, Linds saved me. I came out with a first and third in the 3'0" rounds and a fifth in one of the 2'9" rounds. I was thrilled! We also got zillions of compliments on our outfit and the judge said we would win best dressed. And that wrapped up Saturday.

Matching the purple on the jump.

Through the triple.

Over the brick wall jump!

Good job pony-kins!