Stella gets her XC groove

I feel like I've made significant progress this summer going schooling, including a second trip to our local horse park in which I jumped a BN fence!!!

My summer program of trail ride XC school trail ride XC school trail ride XC school seemed to be working fantastic. 

After two slightly squeamish XC schools and one another much more positive XC lesson I finished it out with three solid performances.  Zero stops, bolder and bolder.  Jumping strange fences out of stride. 


My last XC school before the October HT was AMAZING!  Stella was game, forward, and brave.  I took note of how well she has been galloping away from the group, an issue I have not had occur the entire summer.  She also didn't have any issues with how busy the place was, there were people galloping all around her and she kept her mind on her job.

She's still fantastic in the water!  So happy my hard work trail riding paid off.  She does want to stop in the middle and have a drink which is humorous but might land me as the only eventer to get dumped in the MIDDLE of the water when she screeches to a halt!

She's also been great on drop fences, something I also attribute to trail riding.  I'm still a bit of a mess, but hey, what's new?

We did our first sunken road!  Love the game face.

Not so much to love about our leap up the sunken road.  Dramatic much?

Our only stop of the day was at this ditch.  We've done natural ditches before no big deal but nothing like an eventing ditch.  This stop was my fault.  I ambled up to this without direction or purpose and Stella had no idea why she couldn't just go around. 

I represented her and no hesitation whatsoever!

Here we are going both directions like real eventers!

Did I mention all the galloping?  Stella did a lot of taking me to my fences, like a real eventer.  She wasn't running away in the gallop, she had good pace and rhythm and listen to my adjustments. 

Finally, Squeeee!!!!!!  Jumped this like a pro and left plenty of air between her and the fence!  I was super proud of myself, this is a little big to me and even though I've jumped it three weeks in a row I'm always EEEPPP it's real fence sized!  But I have been so good about keeping my leg on and building to the base that it jumped great. 

After this school I thought we were more than ready for our big move up at the October show!