Preparing for this year's show season

Hello!

I had mostly forgotten about this blog, being busy as usual (haha).



Jesse is doing great! He's a fantastic jumper, although somewhat lazy at times, but there is almost never a stop in him. We're going to our first show of the year, a Combined Test this Sunday, and in a week and a half, we'll be going to King Oak for the first event of the year! We're entered in Novice at the Combined test, and BEginner Novice at King Oak. We're also signed up for Valinor Farm's Event in June, where we'll be running Beginner Novice. Hopefully that will be our last Beginner Novice if all goes well!


Jesse is getting much more consistant with his frame and stretching though his topline, and he is also giving me a much more lively and uphill canter.


His fear or water is coming along somewhat better, although I need to be more consistant with walking him through the small crossing I have every day. On a trail ride with my sister, he followed my other horse into a stream which was about knee deep! Way to go Jesse!

Miss Espresso and Jesse James

Check out those knees!

Quick Update...

Long time no post!
I've been busy with school, work, and riding, as usual.

Jesse has been to 3 events, and completed 2 of them!

His first event was King Oak. My goal for this event was to finish, not being worried about what place we finish, as long as we got over all the obstacles. We had a respectable 32.6 for our dressage, tying us to 5th place.

I trotted the scarier of the Show Jumping fences to give him confidence, this having been his second show he's had to jump at. We had one refusal, which took me by surprise because it looked just like the warm up fences. We also had 15 or so time penalties, because I went too slow, and knocked a pole down. We then moved to 17th place, better known as last.

Cross country was last, and Jesse was a superstar at his first event. We had a stop at fence 2 and 4, and went over the rest of the fences the first time! wooo! We trotted the fences in the woods, and cantered the fences in the field, and he felt like he was having the time of his life. I could tell after XC he felt like the toughest guy. :)
So, my goal was reached at that event!

Next, we went to Stoneleigh-Burnham School Horse Trials.
Our dressage score was awesome, a 30, placing us in 3rd. The scores from 1st-7th was about 6 points apart, making show jumping slightly nerve wrecking, because one pole could push us back a lot. Thankfully, we went clean, and we moved up to 2nd!
Cross country went great, and Jesse didn't bat an eye at the fences. We went fast and clean, and came home with a 2nd place ribbon!

Our last event of the year was Ethel Walker School Horse Trials.
I thought our dressage went awful, and it bothered me the whole day. We actually scored a 33, and were in 3rd place. Can you imagine that?! We went clean on show Jumping, but when cross country rolled around, we were eliminated at the 4th obstacle, the water crossing, and left empty handed.

At least we know what to work on for next year.

And as a side note... Jesse is officially mine!

KING OAK FARM HORSE TRIALS




STONELEIGH-BURNHAM SCHOOL HORSE TRIALS

A couple videos for now

Not the best quality, only because it takes forever to upload the higher quality videos.

For some reason the program I used to edit the videos cut off the ends of my dressage tests. I have no idea why. Although on test B, the camera died right at the end of my test, but I think the program cut some off of it too.

BN Test A : score- 32.6


BN Test B: score- 26


Jumping Videos Just added:

Jumper A (2'6")


Jumper B (2'6"-3')

pictures

These pictures are from Friday's lesson.
Wednesday I have a h/j schooling show with Jesse.
Maybe tomorrow or Wednesday I'll have the Dressage show videos up. Who knows.


Jesse sticking his face in the air... How attractive.


One of his few nice jumps, although he's knocking it down. (3' high 3'6" wide)

Jesse goes to his first show!

Okay, maybe not his first show, but with me, it's his first. It was a schooling dressage show, to gear us up for Horse Trials on September 6-7th. Jesse did pretty good. He loaded well onto the trailer to go to the show, and wasn't dripping with sweat when he came off (yay!).
I had braided Jesse , so he could realize that being all dressed up wasn't a big fat deal.
Warm up went pretty well. He looked in the mirrors, and was looking at everything, but soon settled down, and began to listen.
When we went in, he was looking around again, but I got a lap and a half before the bell rang for my test to begin. For the most part he listened during the test, although was looky in the corners, because he saw the trailer outside. At the finish of our test, the judge said that my score would go up a ton of points (or in eventing's case, down) if he would only bend the correct way instead of looking out of the doors.
So, when my second test started I kept it in mind and kept asking him to pay attention (which I should have done from the beginning, but dressage tests make me oh so nervous, and I freeze up). Our second test was much better.
It was a short, quick day, but well worth getting out for him to see new things before we're surrounded by a couple hundred horses galloping and jumping and doing crazy things.
Our scores were calculated, and my first test recieved a 32.6, and my second test received a 26!!! wow! I was so excited, but when I talked to my trainer, she seemed rather unimpressed and said that 'it's just a schooling show'. Hopefully I can prove her wrong and kick butt in dressage at the event!
My dad took videos (although the video camera died just before the end of my test). I'll try to get the video up sometime next week, because I still have to study study study for my rating in 3 days! AHH!
I have a couple pictures from before riding.

Ingrid Visits

Jesse's owner came to watch a lesson with Elizabeth. She brought him some cookies and carrots- how sweet. Ingrid thought it was a good idea that I had the muzzle on him, and wondered why she didn't think of that when her daughter rode him. She was pleased with how he looked and how he seemed very happy and relaxed.

During the lesson, Jesse was being somewhat of a turd, not wanting to accept contact, and just run with his head in the air (very uncool). We did some leg yields on a circle, going from 20m-10m and then leg yielding out. Elizabeth was also pleased with his canter, how he was getting stronger in his hind end, and rocking back more, and also holding a consistant rhythm and not speeding up on the long sides.
Next lesson we'll be practicing my Dressage tests for the upcoming schooling show, then we'll do jumping lessons to get him stronger and developing his rhythm and understanding balance.

I won't be updating much for the next couple weeks because I am studying for my HB testing for Pony Club which is on August 16th, so I'll be cramming until then.

Ciao!

jump

Hello!
So three days ago we had our pony club lesson and did some mini courses. Jesse had a hard tome with the one stride, so I planned for my next jumping session to work on Gymnastics! woo!
Originally I had planned to jump tomorrow, but with me working pretty much from 11am-9pm, I thought it would be too much to squeeze in some jumps early in the morning, so instead I'll be doing some Dressage tomorrow morning (granted I can wake up early enough to feed).

So today I set up a 2-1-2 stride gymastic, but the last 2 stride didn't quite fit into my arena and after a few rounds of canter poles and a cross rail I felt too squished and moved the last fence closer and made an oxer.

Jesse was being very good right from the start, although was being a little too excited and was rushing through the ground poles. Eventually he settled in and found his rhythm and realized I was in no rush to get him to the other side.

I worked my way up to 1 X rail, and 2 poles, to 2 X rails and a pole and then 2 X rails and an X railed oxer. I then started making things verticals one by one, and Jesse acted like a super star.

By the end of the jumping session, we had 2 verticals (2'6") and a square oxer (also 2'6").

There's not much else to say about today except that he was a super pony!

Picture time! (this time they're not blurry!!)