I took Cat to her first horse show in July with the perfect set of expectations: attend, try not to have bad experiences, and be safe. Beyond that, we were just going to keep it simple. I had no idea what to expect with her. Would she be a spooky horse? Would she want to race other horses? Would new jumps be scary, or would she be so busy looking around that she wouldn't be able to listen? She surprised me by being really wonderful, willing, confident, and we had a great experience.
Now we're looking at attending our second horse show this weekend, at the same location. This gives me some confidence and also potentially dangerous assumptions. I assume she will still be willing, confident, and wonderful, so I must remember that she is a horse with a mind of her own. If she is the horse I expect, then we plan to do some more challenging classes. We topped out the first show at a height of 2'3, and I would like to start this one at 2'3 and move up to 2'9 jumper classes if all goes well. We have been schooling that confidently at home, working on far more difficult combinations than I expect to be in our class. If she is having an off day or feeling spooky, we will keep it simpler and focus on lower jumps, at least for the first day of showing.
So, about prepping for the show. I took a look at the courses for 2'6 and 2'9 last time, and a one stride combo caught my eye. We had not worked on a one stride combo, and so I would not want to tackle these new jump heights until I felt confident about that. My great and wonderful riding partner and I went to work rearranging the arena a few times until we had some great jumps to work with. Over the last few weeks we've been able to school bounces, one strides, and two stride combos, as well as some three and four strides. To make it even more challenging, most of those lines are coming off of a corner in our arena. It's a very nice arena, but not as spacious as what I'll be working with at the show. We also made sure to use oxers, gates, planks, simple verticles, barrels, and rolltops in our jump set-up, to ensure that we had a wide range of obstacles to tackle.
Here we are schooling a 2'9 one stride jump combination. This was the first session we worked on this.
I'm very happy with the way we've prepped for the show and will do some journaling about our schooling and showing, as well. We'll have jumper classes on Saturday and Sunday, which will give us a chance to reflect and try again on pieces that we want to improve on. I feel like the work we've put in on our flat-work, getting out on the hills a little bit, and lots of time working on combinations will benefit us greatly. We've also been jumping up to 3'3", which should make the 2'9 course seem fairly simple in comparison.
To be honest, my goal was to take this young horse up to 3' by the end of the year, so we've already surpassed many of our training goals and are now able to sit back a little bit and focus, refine, and get back to work on the little things, which is a great place to be in.
Riding goals are a necessary thing to have, with flexibility built in, but the planning and preparation to meet those goals must also be completed in order to reach them. If you've got goals, I've got the means to help you reach them.
#planning #confidence #ridinggoals #hunterjumper #horseshow
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