Jumping at Triple Creek

 Thank goodness for Jasi at the show this weekend.  Without her stellar rides and steady progress through her division, I would have come home from the show absolutely irate about Highboy's truly MONSTROUS behavior. 

I swear you can see Highboy plotting the day's mischief

 Beauty was a bit wound up in a new place, and she jumped some of the warmup fences like they were 4' tall!  We are still wondering how Jasi managed to stay on some of those.  Jasi was able to take her from running out at nearly every fence to jumping quietly and straight by their last time through the course.  We practiced some sports psychology by breathing deeply to flush out any negative thoughts, then replacing those negatives with positive statements like, "I have soft arms, I have strong legs" to better the jumping technique.

Each jumping round was progressively better than the previous one.  With excellent performance in their division's flat classes, Jasi and Beauty went home with a fistful of ribbons including a reserve champion for the division!

I was so incredibly proud of Jasi for having the grit to stick with a difficult ride, bettering each round, and going home with a better horse than we arrived with. It was really something to hear the people watching her rides talk about her.  I was standing just outside the arena so I could coach Jasi, and there were quite a few comments from the other trainers such as, "wow, what a good seat", "such a balanced rider", "way to stick with it!"  We love to go to these shows because Triple Creek is such a friendly and encouraging place to compete.  Other riders in Jasi's division came up to her after her initial difficult round, and told her what a great job she had done.  Members of the crowd watching also came up to tell her how well she handled her horse, and compliment her horsemanship.  Lynn, who owns the facility and runs the shows, was supportive and generously let me coach Jasi in the show arena when Beauty was giving her a hard time.  This is a fantastic venue to begin show jumping, and the Bit of Honey Crew always enjoys our time there!

I wish I had such glowing reviews about Highboy's performance.  I know the saying generally goes, "you win some, you lose some", but this show felt more like, "you lose some, you get disqualified from some!"  The horseshow this weekend was an absolute fiasco for Highboy.  We were going to be showing the cross-country derby (jumping in an arena, then jumping out of the arena, then jumping a few cross country fences all in one course), as well as some jumper classes.  Highboy had it in his head that the jumps in the arena were boring at only 2'9", and so he felt the need to do some special maneuvering to entertain himself.  The result was bucking like I have not dealt with in a long time.  My only solace is that we got hilarious pictures of Highboy's antics.  He was really more of a muppet than a horse, doing his best giraffe, llama, jumping like a deer, and "can you see my tonsils?"

I debated about sharing these abysmal results, but I think it's important to tell the story that things seldom go smoothly with horses, as I've been experiencing with Highboy.  I was in an accident in 2008 that left me with brain damage (not related to Highboy), and one of the lingering deficits I have is trouble with short term memory.  Because of this difficulty I have a very hard time memorizing a jump course on the fly.  Add to that Highboy's repetitive flying as he bucked after each jump, and there was just no way a course committed only to short term memory was going to stay in my head.  I went off course in my XC derby, and I had to excuse myself after the third fence in my jumper class because I had no idea which jump came next.  It's incredibly frustrating to me when I can't remember simple things like that, especially when I'm fatigued.

Kicking down the fences as we bucked our way over them

The "one foot" series indicating he thought these were not big enough

Pretending he's never seen a jump before - what is that??

Can't take his eyes off it even when going over

best giraffe impression

best llama impression

It did help me feel better to remind myself I am an eventer.  It's a great sport for me because I can get around the short term memory problems.  I have months to learn my dressage tests, I can walk the XC course as many times as necessary to commit it to long term memory, and I have plenty of time to walk and memorize my one show jumping course before I have to ride it at an event.  Everyone has their favorite sport, and eventing is mine. 

The whole situation brought to mind this diagram:

I also comforted myself with the quote:
“Optimist: Someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it's a cha-cha.” ― Robert Brault

From the horse's perspective, Highboy had a terrific time.  Between kicking at the gate person, launching around the warmup arena while trying to engage the other horses in WWF horse wrestling, and attempting to jump OUT of the warmup arena over the 3' fence he thought it was quite a party.  At the end of the day there was absolutely no remorse on his face, he had genuinely enjoyed himself.  I console myself with photographs, courtesy of Kimberly Hale Photography, and leave my frustrations with a good chuckle over Highboy's silly pictures.  Thank goodness the folks at Triple Creek are supportive and let me school my nonsensical mount there, because I do have to start somewhere.

Lynn did get some video of Highboy on the XC course.  It was his best behavior of the day, probably because it requires some thinking and therefore he found it interesting. It can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PhY3kw4TKY