Jumps and Jumping



Yep.  I think the coast is clear

After our crazy snowstorm, I finally made it to the barn on Friday. Imagine my surprise to find that Walker still hasn't been turned out (we're going on 2 weeks now). I'm slightly bitter about it mainly because I was told that some snow to cover the ice was all we needed. Well, we got like 30 cm of it so put my horse out! Some of the other horses are out because of the location of their paddocks closer to the barn but of course Walker's paddock is way at the back of the property up a hill. I should've taken a walk up there to see if it was still really slippery under the snow but I hope this just isn't because my trainer isn't really going to put them out much this Winter. Even though I go to the barn quite regularly to exercise him, he LOVES his turnout. He's such a sociable horse and I know he relishes his time in the fields with the ladies.

Anyway, rant aside, I had another great ride. After four horrible days of no turnout OR exercise by me, I was expecting a fire breathing maniac but he was actually really well behaved (and even slightly sluggish). AND we cantered our first crossrail!!! I was ecstatic. Nothing better could have happened to end this year off right. Mind you, it wasn't pretty. In fact, I actually didn't think he would go through with it so I ended up getting left behind. Luckily, I know I didn't catch him in the mouth because I rode him into the jump with lots (read:way too much) rein. Oh well, we'll work on technique later! We cantered it a couple times, trotted it a couple times, and then I called it a day. And you can be sure that the lazy pony was sweating after that!



Our jumps!

I left for home shortly after that and will see him again on Boxing Day. In the meantime, my friend A and I built her horse some jumps yesterday and today! Just two sets with standards no higher than 4 feet - but her horse is 14.3 hands and is bred for cow penning and barrels. Needless to say, we'll be teaching her the ropes of jumping as well! Her barn is primarily Western so she didn't even have any poles so we made those too. My father got us the lumber and his friends trickled in and out of the garage throughout the day lending a hand. My fathers friends are great. One of them built the standards for us and also went into the woods and cut us down some trees to use for poles. We were going to leave them covered in bark, but one thing led to another and another one of his friends showed up with some special blade thing to strip the bark. An hour later, we had a planer (something to help smooth them) and then a handsander to finish the job! We painted the standards white to keep it classy and we had great intentions to paint our beautiful poles white and purple, but the men convinced us that the wood was simply too wet for that. Oh well, we're super proud of our jump sets and we even took pictures of us jumping a huge crossrail. Needless to say, after a few jumps over that I can start to relate to how Walker feels about jumping!


The difference in the poles from bark to stripped and sanded (probably the most work)



And of course I couldn't resist giving it a whirl!