A little cross-country

The past week has been spent supporting my daughter's horse habit in several forms.  I took her to a hunter show, and she had her first dressage lesson with Freya and my instructor.  Both of those things went really well, and I plan to do a post about the dressage lesson next.  But first, I wanted to share my daughter's first experience with cross-country jumping.  She has been desperate to try it, but the barn we board at doesn't have a course yet.  (One is in the works, but hasn't been built.)  

As luck would have it, though, the owner of Olaf, the gray mustang that Gemma borrows for the occasional hunter show, invited Gemma to come to a cross-country schooling session at a nearby farm.  So we headed out one evening last week to give it a try.  I honestly expected that Gemma would get on for a few minutes and try jumping a small log or two and we would call it good.

Instead, Gemma got to go over several jumps, including a couple of pretty good-sized logs and what I'm told is a training level bank jump out of water.  It was amazing to see how confident Gemma was and how honest and reliable Olaf was, despite the fact that he'd been giving his owner a little bit of fussiness earlier in the schooling session.  (I am convinced that he knows Gemma is a little kid, and he takes extra good care of her as a result.)  Gemma ended up jumping everything that Olaf had jumped with his owner, with the exception of one brush jump that was hard for Olaf to do without some help from a more experienced rider.

Gemma's regular instructor was at the course schooling one of her horses, and she led the way over the jumps to help Gemma figure out where to go.  I think that was a great strategy because Gemma had literally never been on a cross-country course before, and I'm not sure that she even knew what cross-country jumping was before we got to the farm.  She just wanted to try it because she knew people who did it.

Here are a few pictures and videos of the experience:

 

In this video, Olaf takes his job of introducing Gemma to cross-country jumping very seriously, as he goes about the speed of molasses in January over the first jump:)

 

Then Olaf and Gemma went over the same jump from the other direction at the trot.  What really warmed my heart about this jump was how Gemma gave Olaf a rub on the neck after the jump.  She had watched another student school over the fences and the instructor had suggested the student give her horse a pat after the jumps because she was a sensitive mare who was struggling with some anxiety.  Gemma took the advice to heart and patted Olaf several times as well.

Gemma and Olaf were doing well, so the instructor decided it was time to try something bigger.

And then another bigger jump.  (The person saying, "Holy Crap" in the video is me, with what sounds like a crazy North Dakota accent.  I really could not believe my eyes at that point.)

And the grand finale was the water into the bank jump:

It was a wonderful way to introduce Gemma to cross-country jumping, and it was also a reminder about how confidence-boosting the right horse can be.  I know several people at my barn who have purchased horses that seem to inspire more anxiety than anything else.  The owners are good riders and the horses are good horses.  But they aren't necessarily the best match.  Sometimes, no matter how beautiful the off-the-track-thoroughbreds are, their athleticism is simply too much for the average rider, and an older quarter horse gelding (or a sometimes stubborn and independent mustang) would be a better choice.

Olaf isn't a fancy horse in this area, which is full of well-bred and well-trained thoroughbreds and warmbloods.  But in my opinion, he is worth his weight in gold, and I keep pinching myself because I can't get over how lucky we are to have the opportunity for Gemma to ride him and develop her skills.  Once again, I can see how much horses have to teach us when we let them.