We are ready!

I woke up this morning before my alarm, feeling fired up from my dream of a lovely show jumping round on Henry. I'm super excited for this weekend, and it's even better that we have a public holiday on Monday.

We have a fair few horsey plans, starting with Henry competing in a combined training day on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to it, no matter what the day brings. The weather is going to be perfect, I get to ride my pony and I like competing so it'll be a good day out!

I had a jump on Henry yesterday and he definitely understands what is required. He feels decidedly less green at home, maintains a steady rhythm and generally meets the jumps at a good point. I do have to think about getting him to the base of the jumps though as he was showing a tendency to jump from a long spot yesterday. It was VERY awkward. Overall though he feels really solid, and is easily adjustable.

YUCK

Compared to Coolie, Henry is super easy to jump. He has a lot more natural talent, scope and rhythm. I think it helps a lot I know so much more teaching him to jump that when I taught Coolie. Coolie really loves to add an extra half stride in at the last possible second and it is HORRIBLE to ride. He just likes to rush a tiny bit so no matter if you have the perfect rhythm, that last stride is his and he will change it if he wants. Henry though? He naturally jumps out of his stride, makes it look and feel effortless, and really uses himself.

Next time I jump, I need to set a grid to help us get our pace and take off point sorted out a bit. I feel like I need to push him a bit more forward but it's tricky to get the balance right as I don't want to have him rush, he needs to remain balanced. I'll take relaxed and possibly a little slow at this point in his training though. I imagine we will lose a lot of that relaxation in a competition arena, hopefully to the benefit of not taking any rails.

The horses are having the farrier come out tonight, and I need to clean my tack, make sure all our competition gear is packed and run through my dressage test. Henry will have a quick bath (mostly because I want him to smell nice, I am a mean mum) and I will plait him tomorrow. We don't even have an early morning as they are running the lower classes last!

It's lovely and cool today, and it even rained briefly! We had the driest summer since 2004 with less that 10mL recorded. Hopefully we get some more rain soon but I won't complain about the clear sky's we will have this weekend. It's going to be great!