Moqui Meadows Cross Country Day

This weekend we took horses to Moqui Meadows for a cross country day.  Many thanks for the photos by Kimberly Hale Photography, Tim Rett, and videos by Sara.  Each horse and rider pair did two rounds of the course, Highboy at training level and the other horses at elementary.  Though he's schooled each of the types of individual questions before, this was Highboy's first time doing a full course at training level.  It was extremely fun, and very satisfying to have him behave like he was actually listening and focused on the course instead of messing around to amuse himself.  He just needs it difficult and/or complicated for him to act interested.

The warmup was silly as usual, he wanted to just get going already.  Once we left the start box, however, he was all business and rode incredibly well. 

This rock wall was quite large, I'm impressed at how Highboy cleared it with no difficulty and with plenty of room to spare.

These stairs were fun to go up - no hesitation.

Highboy did his characteristic deep knee bend before he hopped into the water, too.

Here is the gopro video from my helmet camera from Highboy's round.

Here is video that Sara got of Highboy doing his second round.

Ferriana also went to Moqui.  This was her second time here, we had come last fall as her first outing.  So this was Ferriana's second time going around this particular elementary course.  She warmed up well, though seriously over-jumped the warmup fences resulting in some audible gasps from onlookers.  On the course she went fabulously, forward but listening to me, jumping clear but not over-jumping too much.  By the time she was finished her second round she had made it very clear to me that these jumps are now too small for her, and she'd like something more challenging, please.  She expressed this by cantering to the last several fences and BARELY jumping them, just taking a mildly larger canter stride over.  Now that she's jumping conservatively that tells me she's ready for something larger.

 Here is the gopro video from Ferriana's round.