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Sunday 2nd September was the day of the Beds South Pony Club show.  As this is just around the corner from our yard we were definately going.  I decided Santana would sit this one out and Jasmine would take Sonny.  With a space on the lorry we offered to take our yard mate's horse, Baby, as well.  We allowed plenty of time to load Sonny onto the lorry.

Sonny, of course, had other ideas and stubbornly refused to go anywhere near the ramp, rearing wildly if there was any threat of force being used.  We tried food, we tried gentle encouragement and we tried individually moving one foot at a time.  After about an hour and a half of prancing about like a lunatic in front of the ramp a front shoe was loose and Sonny was hopping lame.  That put paid to any idea of her jumping.  Our best effort was to get both front feet on the ramp and then we called it a day.  Sonny was left in her stable in disgrace and Baby went to the show with the lorry all to himself.  

Baby's owner delightedly said that Jasmine could jump Baby as that would let her off the hook and she could sit back and watch!  

We arrived only just in time to enter the 2'3" Jasmine quickly warmed up, learnt the course and off she went getting a lovely clear round.  Bearing in mind that this was only the second time she had ridden him, and he's not the most straight forward of rides, this was excellent work.  Another clear round in the jump off and Jasmine came in fourth!  Fabulous!  

We then found a friend to enter the 2'3" pairs with and they both jumped brilliant rounds to win the class!  Jasmine came out with a huge grin all over her face the like of which I haven't seen for months.  If only she could achieve this buzz with Sonny.

Unfortunately I have no pictures because in the palaver in the morning I forgot the camera - typical!

Keysoe!

I foolishly allowed my yard mate to persuade me to go to an evening clear round event at Keysoe on 22nd August .  I was very dubious about jumping as I haven't done any for ages.  She said she would put some jumps up in our menage for us to do some practice a couple of days before.  Okay then, I thought, we'll see how the practice goes. 

Rather surprisingly, the practice went extremely well and when I measured the biggest jump afterwards it was 2'9"  -  he's never jumped that big before!  I didn't really have an excuse not to go then and I was strangely quite keen!    

Not too scary

We came across a diversion en route to Keysoe and managed to get lost so we were a little late arriving which meant that we were too late for the 60cm and had to jump the 70cm course.



Scary pumpkin jump

When we went in the ring Santana was all over the place, looking at the jumps and the banners round the edge.  He's lead such a sheltered life it was all rather overwhelming for him!  I showed him as many of the jumps as I could before heading towards the first - a quite innocuous straight.  When Santana realised I was expecting him to jump it his legs went all over the place and he stopped with his nose almost touching the top of the pole and legs akimbo.  We came around a second time and we were off   ... that is until we arrived at the second jump.  We managed to get round the course - eventually - and as I had paid for two rounds decided to do my second round straight away. 

This time it all went much more smoothly.  I knew he had now seen, and jumped, all nine jumps so there was no excuse.  I sat back and rode with purpose and we flew over all of them.  The only hiccup was a run out at the second part of the double, but that was soon remedied. 

All in all I was very pleased with him as it was a big step up from anything he had done before.  I came out of the ring absolutely exhausted and pumped with adrenalin, but I was also pleased with myself for having done it.

Second part of the double - Yay!

Getting into our stride