windurra w Sally!

Happy Monday, y’all! We’ve continued to enjoy the milder and less humid conditions lately, and decided to capitalize with a destination xc clinic @ Windurra with local legend Sally!

freshly arrived on a gorgeous day for some xc!

Not gonna lie, Windurra is just a touch far from our new boarding barn, and especially for our level there are certainly plenty of places closer to home. In fact, I’d kinda gone into this year thinking we’d get our regularly scheduled xc fix in lessons with new 5* event trainer, considering those lessons take place at a full fledged eventing facility complete with xc course too… 

started by being a princess over some little logs

But that hasn't happened yet for whatever reasons, and in the meantime I’ve been keeping us in practice with little solo expeditions to Tranquillity. Which, obvi, I love. But every now and then I wonder if all the haters who think I’m ruining my horses by jumping them so much outside of lessons might at least have a point. And so off to a lesson we went!

i feel like there were more bebe jumps than last time we were here

And it was a good one!! Not necessarily meaningfully different from my solo schools — bc let’s be real if you’re jumping small fences for the lowest levels of eventing… Basically just point and shoot your way around lol. 

But then again it’s always super nice to have expert supervision — esp in the form of Sally, a widely popular local pro who is all about confidence and successful progressive repetition. And also a bit unapologetic for pushing for those slightly bigger or more technical elements that we might not do alone.

look at this cute little table!

Doozy, for her part, was a super star! Still strong and chaotic (especially on the back side of fences), and also *quite* fussy about picking up our trot and canter at the beginning of every turn. Like she gets so ahead of herself, knows we’re going to canter, but also knows I’m going to ask her to go slower than she wants, and so we kinda get stuck in a little fit just trying to get going. Thankfully, these little moments became significantly less explosive as the lesson wore on.

already a pro about water

It was exactly the style of ride that I honestly never really do with Doozy — because it’s hard, because of those little fits. Starting and stopping and jumping one fence at a time is a challenge when every transition feels so hard won. Much much easier to just get into gear and cruise around for a bit. 

ooh we jumped some BN things too!

But then again, that’s what lessons are for. That’s what practice is for. And Doozy can certainly benefit from learning that we stop after every single jump, instead of racing off into the distant horizon, never to be seen again (LOL. But Really Tho!). 

a little wild about the banks combination lol

The jumps themselves were also quite nice. It seems like Windurra has invested in a whole bunch of new low level fences — including quite a few that had too much top spread for Starter but maybe weren’t fully BN height - a lovely dimension! It was nice to have the variety, even tho realistically Windurra is most useful for the higher level horses.

another super sweet little table!

Doozy tackled each fence with aplomb, only ever really surprising me when she occasionally proved slightly more civilized than I was expecting. She really didn’t make a bid at anything (except the step up, oops) and actually bc of our sorta fussy sticky transitions, I was able to keep a fair amount of leg on the horse almost all of the ride!

lovely roll

Our straightness was not fantastic — possibly also a side effect of the fussy transitions. But ya know. That’s why we practice, right?

fun feeder!

Probably the only kinda crazy (for us) thing that we jumped was a little roll top coming out of the water. Not a big fence at all, tho obvi bc of its position on rising ground it’d measure quite a bit larger than its true dimensions. Plus, obvi, the proximity to water makes it significantly more technical than what the guidelines allow even at Novice. 

technically you wouldn’t see *anything* like this before training level, but why not play a little amirite?

But that’s kinda the cool thing about Windurra overall — All the questions thru 5* are set up in various levels of progressions and heights, such that you can start to get familiar with more technical stuff in easy and inviting ways. 

view of the same jump from the other side — obvi a very small jump but quite a nice question!

Overall, I’m glad we went — and def want to go again, tho ugh I wish it wasn’t so far! It felt reassuring to be in a lesson environment where the coach was basically just reaffirming that we’re doing the things we need to be doing for where we are in the training. 

proud biscuit <3

Like, yes, there are things for us to work on — straightness, balance, posture, all the normal things — but that’s literally what this level is for, learning all that. There is no prerequisite for needing to know everything before you’re allowed to do anything, it turns out.

helmet cam video!!

And ya know, it also turns out that doing the things — even somewhat less than perfectly — is still fun and rewarding in its own right <3

feeding the beast before going home

Anyway. Doozy was basically a princess about being on the grounds from beginning to end. There was a fair amount of activity when we first arrived, tho we had the place almost entirely to ourselves by the end. Didn’t seem to matter for Doozy, tho! 

feeding the other beast too, ahem

She was also super good about horses in our group coming and going for their turns, including galloping and jumping in close proximity to us. We’ve only ever really had maybe 3-5 experiences ever of schooling xc in this type of group environment, and you really never know with Doozy, but so far, so good!

pro tip (especially if you’re actually a pro!): *PaY* *tHe* *PeOpLe*

It’s nice to know bc while realistically I’ll still probably do most of my routine xc schooling solo at Tranquillity or similar places, there’s something special about the fun camaraderie of group clinic-style lessons. 

I was actually talking about it with someone who rode in an earlier group — about how it’s a little far, and a little expensive, and all these little reasons why maybe it’s not the most rational thing. Except — legit NONE of this is a ‘rational’ thing. We do it bc we want to, and isn’t that enough?