Pony Club Clinic - Sunday May 22, 2011

I officially joined Pony Club two weeks ago. My best friend Lydia is part of a pony club which holds some of the mounted meetings at a farm a mile down the road from me.

With monetary support from my parents (Thank you :) ) I joined the club!

The first event I took part in was a jump position clinic yesterday with instructor Karen Marcotte.

It was my first time seriously jumping Daisy in only a snaffle, and well. . .

It was interesting.

We warmed up a bit over trot poles, then each person schooled over a course of 8 jumps twice. I was in the "green" horse lesson, and boy am I glad considering the shenanigans Daisy allowed herself once we started jumping.

I like to call the picture below "The Flash". She was relatively lazy during warm up. It didn't last long. As soon as we started jumping, she was off like a rocket. Our first jump was a biggish vertical with a box underneath, and it was the one jump I was thinking she'd have trouble with. I was right, but not in the way I thought she'd have trouble.

She took off coming up to it, and by the time she got there she was flat out galloping without any sort of brakes and she launched herself over it. To be honest, that first jump was a complete blast, but totally out of control. It was moderately embarrassing, however it was so much fun I don't really care about how much of a fool we made ourselves.

I didn't really think Daisy would refuse any jumps, because she rarely does. She refused this jump though. I don't have any pictures of the other side of it, but it is painted white on the other side with bright neon green horses stamped on it. Plus, the way the pieces were set up, the jump had a tiny bit of depth and I think that added together made her stop. It was not a real whole-hearted refusal though. If I had had leg on her as I should have, I think I could have kicked her over. Instead, we circled (*choke*. I HATE circling before a jump! It teaches them the wrong thing and I know it. I would have rather kicked her over from a standstill like I always do, but I wasn't sure if that's frowned upon :P) and she backed up and refused for a couple steps, but then

I got her over.

The rest of the course was just as the beginning, not quite as bad, just very quick. She didn't jump flat though, I'll say that. The thing with jumping is that, no matter how terrible it goes, it's still a blast :)

This is my friend Lydia on her TB/Percheron cross Bella.

This is from our second time through the course. Daisy was a bit slower, but still speedier than she should have been. We didn't really work on my position because we were trying to edit hers :P. The instructor made a good point that I shouldn't stop giving her leg simply because she's racing already. She encouraged me to maintain leg pressure so that we could keep in a rhythm, and that Daisy would eventually learn that it would be easier to go slower since I would be forcing her to keep a steady rhythm either way. It makes sense.

We looked pretty silly racing through the course, which makes me think I need to go back to a kimberwicke for jumping in the future. I'll talk to my instructor about it.

Overall, I had a great time, and my mom took great pictures :)

Next event is a mounted meeting Wednesday afternoon. Should be fun :)