Fair Hill 2017: XC

Ready to recap some cross country riding??? To set the stage and summarize the earlier phases: Charlie had laid down what felt like a really nice test for his current level of training, tho I knew we had mistakes. So it was a bit of a gamble on what the score might be (hint: it was awful lol).

Stadium was clear with very reasonable jumping efforts but some messiness in between the fences - mostly surrounding an overly strong horse haha.

i <3 those pricked ears tho

Leading up to this event, I dabbled with the idea of purposefully eliminating myself (or withdrawing, I guess) by intentionally going off course to school some of the Intro jumps instead of my own Elementary course.

This plan depended in part on how the earlier phases had gone. Part of me felt like I should take advantage of the schooling opportunity while I had it, but I also felt like we would benefit from a smooth easy complete run - and maybe a ribbon too if things went well enough.

Ultimately I chose the latter. Walking both courses reaffirmed my impression that the Intro was slightly beyond Charlie's confirmed level of schooling right now. It's possible (or even likely) that he would have been fine. But I wanted a safer bet than that for his second ever event.

The bank was actually a moderately spooky log drop shared with BN. The water was very inviting but with a full size house a few strides out. And the ditch was actually maybe the most adorable ditch I'd ever seen - possibly the only of those three questions I actually kinda wanted a shot at lol. Oh well. All are saved for another day, bc on this day we stayed our course with Elementary.

if you can believe, i actually forgot to take pictures of the first few fences on our walk. so here's a still from the helmet cam video instead. jump 1 was a simple log

Which I honestly felt pretty good about - the same attitude that carried me through stadium held true for cross country too. I chose this "easy" level specifically to make good work out of it, to not end up in any kind of 'survival' mode or make poor choices bc of nerves.

So we jumped the Elem and Intro warm up fences (both fine) then headed off to the start box. Walked out of the start box, picked up an easy ambling trot for the first log jump, then never looked back.

cute little house for 2. and actually i kinda like these "between the ear" shots for the jumps!

At Loch Moy a couple weeks ago, Charlie was a little backed off from the first couple jumps and actually started dropping down to trot in front of fences for the entire mid-section of the course. It obviously wasn't bad or naughty - he just needed processing time.

tho it's fun having side shots too <3 yay for friends on course to snag pictures!

On this day at Fair Hill, tho?? There was NONE of that lol. Charlie landed in a canter from Fence 1 and proceeded to carry us on through the rest of the course in everything from a lovely hunter canter to a marginally nerve wracking strung out hand gallop haha.

little ramp coop thing for 3

Tho it was the same story as with stadium - he didn't really build in pace so much as he just kinda shifted gears occasionally. And if I could get my half halts (ha, such a gentle word for them) through to him - he would shift right back down again and hold steady.

just in case you got spoiled by all the HQ pics from loch moy, here's a stark reminder of 'Fraidy Cat Eventing's low low low standard for photo quality

The only real issue was..... it was kinda tricky getting through to him on occasion. Lol. Mostly tho he honestly found a pretty ok rhythm and jumped the first few fences either from right out of stride or from a tidy tho slightly deeper spot. If y'all know anything about me, it should be that I prefer that tidy little deep spot haha. So I was quite cool with it.

hay wagon!

Tho Charlie asked his first legitimate "Are You Sure?" question at fence 4, naturally from a short right handed approach (as turning right apparently became an Issue again haha). And this jump is honestly maybe visually reminiscent of that hay pile jump he stopped at during his first school.

cruisin pony <3

On this day tho, we were not having any stops. Another nice side effect of jumping jumps that even I, le 'Fraidy Cat, am not afraid of, is that so long as I'm not unseated or somehow thrown out of position, I'm gonna ride that damn horse to the fence and he can figure out the rest. Which he did. Good boy.

baby produce stand! the BN version of this scared the shit out of me back in 2015 with Izzy. fence 6 is downhill in the distance.

Then we had a nice little cruise to the tiny blue steps. Honestly? I kinda hated this course. I really wished there was something between this and the Intro bc these jumps felt a little bit like a waste of time, but I still felt like I made the right choice about not entering the Intro division. Oh well.

and even babier bench!

Charlie might not have learned much from these jumps themselves, but I'm hoping he learned a bit about the rest of all things cross country. Like, for instance, he kinda barreled down the hill towards the above "bench" and I really had no qualms sitting him back on his behind even tho it futzed our distance to this jump a bit.

lopin' through the woods

He figured it out tho. Nbd. Made that jump work just fine, and then landed in the loveliest of little lopes through the treeline and into the next field.

another box type thing!

I kind of appreciate that Fair Hill tried to make all their Elementary jumps unique and beautiful rather than all being just plain logs on the ground. The different colors and silhouettes are all quite nice. At the end of the day tho.... they all kinda look like the boxes that fill hunter fences.

wheee boxes!

Which I guess is cool. Charlie loves him some boxes and just continued to pop right on up and over them! I'm not sure I'd say he was "hunting" fences - but he definitely understood that we were out to Jump Things, and pretty easily locked on to whatever I lined us up for (while totally ignoring literally everything else on course, good boy!).

spooky black monster eyes? or..... just another box?

Jump 8 posed us some issues too tho, as it was another right hand turn approach (I guess they were all right hand turns since it was just a plain loop lol).

emma: "dear god, turn, horse, TURN!!"
charlie: "huh?"

And like. This is where it gets really frustrating when ppl say that the horse doesn't "look" strong, or "look" fast, or "look" like whatever I'm describing him as. Bc dammit. He's a lot of horse and handles like a freight train. And he's also quite adept at just flipping his nose and gaping his mouth instead of giving to pressure. As our esteemed dressage judge noted, he "runs through the aids."

phew, made it! and moves like that are why i wanted tiny jumps lol

Obviously tho he's still a very good boy. And skipped over the jump no problem from a fairly awkward and disheveled approach haha. But again, this is why I chose elementary. Bc the easiest choice for him even in a sloppy situation is to just do the right thing.

look seymour, it's another box!

From that, we kept cruisin right on around to our penultimate fence - this time orange and headed for home.

charlie: "nbd"

He jumped from a polite but tight distance (totes fine, bro!) and cantered right on along to the finish.

the fair hill train!!

Actually the best feeling about all of this was how quickly Charlie understood what we were about out there. Right hand turns notwithstanding, he picked up on the game and had very little difficulty in executing it.

charlie: "Choo CHOO mother fuckers!!"

Like, even his one honest spooky moment at Fence 4 felt like a great learning moment too - bc hopefully the learned response was : we jump the jumps, sir. And jump he did!!

helmet cam video here!!!

surprisingly the video is only a little longer than loch moy's even tho the fair hill track was a much greater distance. methinks it's bc we basically ran through the whole thing this time lol

The reality is that my trainer is not wrong in saying Charlie's not learning anything from smaller jumps. That he needs and wants something to look at, to make him think. But it's also not wrong to say that there's more to learn about this sport than just the jumping. And Charlie at times during this event showed that he hasn't internalized all those other aspects yet (fucking duh bc it's only his second full 3-phase haha).

So my hope is that by "going through the motions" per se in this division, and allowing the horse to lay down some honestly pretty nice jumping efforts for his current level of training, that he'll understand the process better at our next events where we'll be back at the 2'3 level and can expect to start seeing ditches / banks / water on course.

fair hill fox jump!!

But anyway. Long story short, I'm happy we ran this full division and that I rode for the completion rather than any other alternative. I'm also quite pleased with the horse's performance in general and feel like I have a clearer idea of what needs work and how we'll need to continue developing.

Mostly, my sense is that Charlie is a genuine and honest horse. He's a good thinker and easily focuses on tasks or activities that interest him. Luckily for me, this whole jumping thing definitely piques his interest - even at speed bump height haha. Thank god for amateur friendly horses!

It just generally felt really good to get through this event in a fairly straight forward fashion. Charlie got through each phase with confidence, and fully demonstrated that he knows how to get the right answers even in unfamiliar and potentially stressful situations. That's exactly the kind of horse I want to be riding, especially as we start thinking about the situations that are likeliest to make *me* nervous too lol.

So. Event #2 is in the books. And Charlie's clear jumping moved him up from 6th to finish 4th for his efforts. Good boy :)