The best cross country pone

I went into the weekend thinking I didn’t have much on but that’s never a reality for me. Even if I don’t have plans, there is still so much today. Anyway, I did have lots of plans (it turns out on reflection). After our big day Saturday (and then a big night drinking with horse friends) we followed it up with cross country training.

One of my friends wanted to go so we met up at Brigadoon mid-morning. It wasn’t supposed to be hot, but it was very humid (rain is forecast all week and as I type this we are getting our first proper rain for the year and I feel so excited!) so it felt a lot warmer than it was.

Our first stop on course was the water. I warmed up around the water and Henry felt a bit tired, he wasn’t as sharp as he could be but there was still enough in the tank. I had already picked what jumps I wanted to do and started out trotting a little brush and then down through the water. That was easy, so I added in a larger log, also easy, then log to bridge. He looked at the bridge as if to size it up, then gave it a decent amount of air. We came through and did the bigger bridge which he was pretty nonchalant about and finished at the water jumping the 95 log out. He was game for the log but I could feel him checking in with me, as if he was asking if I was sure because we usually bypass large, skinny jumps like it. He made very light work of it and we move onto a different section of the course.

As we walked over I picked the course I wanted to do. I showed him one jump because I hate it and there was the possibility I would under ride it. He sniffed it and then we kept walking around to pick our jumps. I settled on a course of about 6 fences and picked up a good canter and set off.

We jumped the snot out of all the jumps, but jumped a little too large into a combination and I felt that the B element was going to be a disaster so I circled and came around again, this time coming in quieter and nailing the line. The box I hate he didn’t glance at we finished our course with ease.

We had a break while I talked my friend through her course, then he watched a bigger, more grown up horse power through some 2* jumps and gallop away. He was convinced he could do that too so when I picked up canter to do a larger course he puffed himself up and went so fast. Henry is not fast so we actually just had a lovely forward canter and the jumps rode well.

We finished our session off at the sunken road. By this point Henry was getting really tired and it was hot, and it was hard work. We jumped a combination through the ditch and I sucked his energy and he practically climbed over the upright out of the combination. We came around twice more and on the third time we nailed it. I needed to allow him to be more forward and bring him back by just sitting up in the middle. We also did a fun ski jump that was easy peasy.

It was a good session, and it was great to do some decent courses and string a heap of fences together. It gave me a good feel of what needs work, and put us in a really good place for our first event. All the jumps looked small, Henry found it easy and we trained some decent sized fences. He is just the coolest horse out!