Revival of the Jump Tack

Thoroughbred is very much a thoroughbred

My husband finally rescued my tack trunk from being his table slave and I was able to ride the Baconator in the jump tack. I had a feeling my already fiery pants pony would be even more fiery once I put the jump tack on. But, she chilled out more than I expected, and I was very thankful.

Ready to go

I kept warm up pretty brief. All I wanted was her to respond to my seat and pay attention to me. She was mostly behaving, and one thing I have learned with this horse is that the more you try to fidget and fine tune something, the more nervous and tense she gets, so I took what I had and called it good.

Tiny sand square

After our warm up in the sand square, I took her out to our sad looking dirt pasture where we had placed a single trot pole, as well as a line of four trot poles. I thought I had spaced them out at 4ft, but looking at the pictures, they look longer than that. Whoops! I was cracking up as she snorted and eyed the poles on the ground. Are you kidding me horse? We jumped around novice last year.

What r this?

We started off a little rough, but smoothed out the single trot pole. We have never done well with trot poles, but hopefully this year we can change that. I aimed her towards the four trot poles and prayed that she wouldn't try to leap them, as she usually does. She thought about it, but held it together through the poles. Hooray! The second time around, she thought about breaking to the canter, but didn't. We had a few pole touches, but it was better than I thought it would be. She was listening pretty well to my seat and trying really hard to keep her excitement under-wraps.

Go Bacon go!

I thought maybe we could do a xrail a couple of times because she was behaving. She had a really good look at the xrail both ways, because damn, xrails are scary. And after that, we cantered the jump and she waited and waited and listened UNTIL THE LAST STRIDE BECAUSE WE CAN JUMP THE JUMP BACON KNOWS WHAT TO DOOOOO.

WHOA THE POLES CHANGED

Hold on mom, I got this!!!!!

Oh horse. We cantered it a couple of times and she listened to me. Until that last stride. I just giggled, because this is what happens anytime we have a long break from jumping. Soon she will be listening and I can put her wherever. I was happy to be riding such an excited pony.

Oh yeah, we can just canter over this, can't we?