A Cross Country School

Ugh. Another crappy ride with crappy weather!

Thursday night we had a deluge, and I'm not kidding you! Lake Theroux has returned in full force with about 4 inches of water in it. Eeek. Today Shannon and I went to Scarlet Hill for a lesson with Meredith. With the amount of water we receive I went in REALLY concerned that we may not be able to school cross country. Thankfully Meredith knows how much we need to school and lets us do a few fences.

First we warm-up in the indoor. Of course I'm in my jumping tack and I just can't get my leg on him as well in this saddle with my stirrups up 3 inches! The flatwork goes pretty well, so we go outdoors in the drizzle drazzle grossness which is now called Massachusetts!

We do a few logs to start with, and Buck does the "OMG A LOG" at the first fence again. haha. Definitely planning a good spanking before the first fence at Groton House! The rest of the logs he is great too, despite the footing being grassy/wet/mucky. I could hear the sloshing underneath his hooves and definitely rode more conservatively. Buck was conservative too, thankfully!

Our next test is a small log which we are told that a TROLL lives under. I LAUGH at Meredith saying, "IT'S JUST A LOG!" I say this partly for my own bravery, but also for Kisses (Shannon's pony) to hear....hehe. Kisses gets the message, but apparently Buck listens to Meredith and LAUNCHES over the tiny log like it's 3 feet, hehehehehehehe. WEEEEEEEE. That was actually kinda fun. I'm not sure if we got that response because Buck was FOLLOWING Kisses or because there actually WAS a troll under it ;)

We continue the lesson. One of the fences is a log roll top, probably about 2'3" or so, but on an uphill approach. We try it in the canter and the first time he WHAMS it with his hind leg. OUCH. Apparently I came back in the saddle too quickly, causing him to drop his legs. I learned my lesson there. The rest of the fences were ho hum. We walked over a 2' olive colored coop.....I didn't ride forward to it because I was REALLY concerned about the footing....so Buck decided to walk it. haha. Note to self: if you present the horse to the jump, you need to RIDE to the base and jump it with him. Duh.

I really felt icky about this lesson though. He jumped everything the first time, but it felt all wrong. When we canter fences he is getting SOOOOO close to the base of the jump that it is scary! Meredith tells me that he is being SMART about his spots because a pony of his size NEEDS to get to the base of the fence to get across some of the wider stuff. She says it's appropriate especially when fences slope away from us and have a wider base (such as a coop or rolltop). She also told me that I need to LET HIM choose his spots and stay back. I'm going to have to get used to all of this, because it's new!

Buck was really conservative with the footing. Meredith thinks he slipped on the take off when he hit the roll top, so it maybe that he really wanted to tone it down.

I am hoping that the footing on Sunday is better than it was today....and that maybe we'll be able to get in to a groove again out on course so he can gain confidence once more!