October HT pictures

I got my pictures from the October HT and I'm just so thrilled with them.  It's so nice having quality pictures of you not looking like an idiot.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Wheel of Death

I've been so bad about blogging lately!  Here's a brief update about where we're going and what we're doing. 

I decided to enter Annie in the November show at CAF coming up this Saturday, I wasn't sure I wanted to do another show but I had such an awesome time at the October HT that I really wanted to build on that.  Since I have not been able to catch a break with lessons recently I kept her at Starter, a little upset that I didn't meet my goal this year of BN at the end of the season but a wise decision since I have not jumped with LAZ in months and it's been hard meeting up with Rachel due to our busy schedules. 

I did enter her in the gambler's choice.  My goal being to jump the 2 foot gamblers choice then the 2' 6" if I was feeling confident.  That way I could pick and choose my fences and not have to worry about doing an entire course.  Unfortunately it looks like they are running the Gambler's Choice from highest to lowest so we'll see how I feel at the show.  It makes sense from a management perspective since they'll run it after the highest division jumps but not that helpful for me. 

So I'd like to remember my stupid stadium course at this show and maintain or better my dressage score. 

Since I have not been able to catch a lesson I decided to go ahead and set up some small fences to jump on my own (with someone supervising of course!).  For some crazy reason I decided to set up a circle of death, an exercise that has several different version.

For me this was a series of jumps on a 20m circle, for me there were three TINY fences.  I probably could have fit a 4th fence but it would probably have been beyond our skill level.   If you don't get it right the entire thing goes horribly wrong and I was more about having fun then killing myself so I kept the fences at 18 inches or less. 

First you jump a few single fences to warm up.  Then you add two fences together.  It doesn't get difficult until you add in all three fences together.  It's jump two strides jump two strides jump 4 strides jump two strides jump two strides jump four strides until you eventually get so dizzy you have to jump out of the circle.  I really had to work to fit in the third fence at first and really be very clear by continuing to turn over the top of the fence and look where I was going, which wasn't easy for me.  If you get into a good rhythm the entire exercise goes easily but once you get off it gets ugly until you fix it.  Once Annie got it she GOT it and happily jumped it off both leads although her right lead was harder.  Annie had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun and I ended up laughing while jumping, a rare occurrence. 

The next day I was just doing flatwork and not only was Annie grumpy but I could hardly keep her on a 20 circle at the canter.  Oh how horses do things to irritate us.