Ahhhh, today was a good day. Today, we forgot about thoracic slings, random lameness's, third level goals, etc. Today, we just had fun. And Dan had fun too! We went XC schooling at Pine Top with Jacel and Laura and had so much fun. It was a gorgeous day for it.
We all warmed up and then Dan and I jumped two fences and then Jacel told us to carry on over the table. It might have been a modified table! Dan took a flyer and holy moly he had to superman. But we made it. Jacel was like... "that was an aggressive spot". Ha ha. Dude!! I know! I didn't ask! She laughed and said it was great, because a year ago he was wimping out and adding. So then we did a bendy line coop to a brush. We started with the novice line... then did the training line. And then I did the modified line. At least we think it was the modified line. Maybe it was training. He was spot on! Then I mentioned that the pimple jump looked fun. It was definitely prelim. But because of the question it wasn't huge. Except.. it was bigger than we were prepared for, especially with the massive drop on landing. Dan came up and slid into it. He was confused. We tried again and again, he stopped. Jacel said to not stress.. he just didn't understand and it was bigger than I thought and that it wasn't a big deal. He just wasn't prepared in his education for it yet. Whoops! We went and jumped something else and he was totally fine so yay for no meltdowns or shutdowns! Then we jumped the corner and he was super.
Then we noticed a friend who had been eliminated at the bank last weekend who was schooling it today. Her trainer was yelling and growling and Dan was like "what the heck? That's a monster over there!" ha ha. But he settled quickly. I asked Jacel and Laura if they cared if I offered a lead and they said nope. So I asked Dan to head over there and he picked up this easy cowboy lope almost on the buckle and loped right up. I swear he said hi to that horse in his best cowboy drawl... "what's up son? Need a hand?". ha ha. I asked if we could help and they agreed. I told them I couldn't promise Dan would do the drop but I thought he would and of course he walked right off like it was nothing. Her horse still didn't come down so I walked Dan up to him, and we were basically underneath them. He reached up and sniffed his nose was like "Come on down Dude, the waters' fine"!. hee hee. So we went back down it two more times and finally her horse followed us. We did it one more time as a lead and then her horse did it on his own. Dan was so proud and strutted back to the girls. Like "Did you see what I did? I'm a rockstar". Yes you are son, yes you are. So then we jumped a huge table car thing... and a big roll top brush. Then we did the half coffins, which were quite wimpy to be honest. Then we went to the water. And Dan sat for awhile while they did the water so then I picked him up and asked him to jump a small table and he totally ran out. Um... what?! Jacel said he thought he was done and I needed to get his hind feet moving again, so... I did. We did that jump... through the water, out over the logs and then went to the drop fence a few strides before the next water and he stopped. It wasn't that impressive but Jacel said it was confusing to the horses so I had to ride harder and almost think of holding his head up a little. So I did and he was brave and went. Then we jumped the roll top IN the water. But it was a little sticky, so we circled and did the big drop fence to the water, then the rolltop in the water again and he was awesome! Then I almost kept going to the trakehner, but chickened out. We did the novice faux trakehner first and then circled back to the training one and he just soared over it! Yahooo!!
We quit with that. It was tempting to do more, but he worked hard and had fun. And so did I. Yay!
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