What Do You Do...

With the quarter horse who does EVERYTHING?

Why, take him to the local jump show. Of course.

Oh, I didn't know that you guys jumped. 

I don't. And it was horribly obvious. I feel compelled to apologize to the instructors who have given me a hand full of lessons over fences. I did not represent you guys well. At all.

I mean, I didn't totally bomb... RC was the green horse champion. We came, we saw and we conquered the crossrail class.  And I should have stopped there. I really should have, but at five dollars a class, I figured that I might as well put him in the 18"-2' class too.

That's right. Green horse Champion right there. 

Does this picture make our butts look big?

And here is where I should have beaten myself with a rolled up news paper while shouting "Bad trainer! Bad!"

I know that I over faced RC. He's never jumped a solid obstacle and I haven't jumped in, oh, a year or so, and even then it was half-hearted just for fun kind of jumping. On London.

Super Pony!

It went bad real quick. My two foot course could politely be called 'falling onto your horse' but we made it mostly clear with only one refusal. Poor RC. Then for the relay class, RC met solid obstacles. Which were in the 2'-2'6" range. Oh boy.

One small step for man, one GIANT canter step for equine kind....

We racked up refusals like they were going out of style until one refusal where I went right and RC went left. We parted company (And no pictures! I finally come off my horse - a potentially epic picture - and no pictures were taken! Come on!).

If you look really closely, you can see the arena dirt on my boot. And thigh. And butt...

Of course, like any real rider, I popped back on and forced RC over the rest of the fences with sheer will. After that, he was more than happy to pop over a solid fence...

Left behind a little?

And he earned double rations for putting up with me. Poor guy..... This is why I will never be able to sell this horse. La Ponita would never put up with this shit....

Moral of this story.... Practice before you take the WonderPony to a show. It'll be less embarassing...

Now I have a year to get Delight hopping over 2' fences... Never fear, I will not abandon my sand box. My first love will always be dressage, but I feel the need to redeem myself.

"Ride better" indeed.