schooling at windurra

Happy Wednesday, folks!! I promise not to be too wordy, but we have a metric shit ton of media today, woot woot!! Doozy and I had another xc lesson at Windurra with local legend, Sally Cousins, fresh off her impressive finish with Wizard in the 3* at Fair Hill!

grazing serenely when we first arrived <3
(tho yes i promise she did get more amped after i got on)

Honestly I think Doozy and I really had a nice little routine going with our solo xc schooling trips to Tranquillity this summer and last fall. There’s something to be said about just going out and doing what you wanna do, without making a whole big thing of it. 

warm up loggoes!!

But there’s a time and a place for everything, right? And now that Doozy and I have a relatively established baseline of experience and comfort, it feels appropriate to seek professional guidance to start fine tuning and adding more (level-appropriate + progressive) challenge.

oooh right away starting with the jumps we finished on last time

And Sally is such a pro at that. Teaching is a huge part of her business model, and for a very good reason: she’s good at it. She has loads of regular students, even more like me who flit in and out on a semi-infrequent basis over the years, and presumably countless straight up strangers riding in her clinics. 

normalizing <3

Over time, she’s developed a keen eye for feeling out horses and riders, and guiding them through appropriate and progressive exercises. It also helps that she knows Windurra inside and out, she’s always super familiar with how everything is set up, and knows how to string exercises together in all the various ‘zones.’ 

sally is so progressive about introducing things like cut outs etc

My goals for this ride were simple: Listen to Sally. Don’t get too stuck in my head. Prioritize confidence and relaxation. Listen to Sally.

trit-trotting to the little bank!

And we totally did exactly that! Sally started us off right away stringing things together — first some small logs, then a line of starter jumps, then introducing those ‘slightly smaller than BN height, but definitely more spread than starter’ jumps we finished with last time, and then right onto actual BN stuff. 

another nice roll top

Doozy was more or less being quite good. She gets a little stuck and behind the leg and snarled up in a pretzel every time we pick up for our turn, but I just did my best to kinda ignore it and just ride her forward, oozing into a flow as drama-free as possible. 

omg a **real** ditch aaaah lol (still quite narrow tho!)

Sally’s biggest feedback for us was that I need to focus on straightness to the fence (sound familiar?), and that we need to be organizing **right away** on landing. She said I’ve got about 2-3 strides on landing before Doozy kinda bolts away, and that I need to act quickly in that time — the longer I wait to half halt, the stronger the half halt will need to be. 

this was definitely the biggest thing we jumped, esp re: spread. caught us both a little by surprise

While technically this is legit the opposite of some of the work we’ve done with Woodge on exaggerating that big release exactly at the moment Doozy would expect me to pull, I think these two concepts actually can live in harmony. I need to practice the release so that the half halt works when we need it, like when jumping cross country. 

doozy nailed the super fun mini course!

Mostly tho, Sally advised that I don’t over think it. Ride the horse forward, connected and straight. I’ll know it’s working when… I get the result that I want. It really is that simple. 

last exercise of the day (tho we repeated once more to clean up the house)

Anyway we put a few fun features together — jumped a little ditch, and did slightly more grown up variations of the bank and water complex exercises we did last time, and it was good!

omg guys we are growing up!!

It was interesting tho, with the larger jumps (esp a properly chunky house by the ditch that I suspect exceeds BN dimensions at least in width but possibly height too), Doozy a couple times had to dig a little deep, try a little harder. And it kinda surprised her, I think. 

lol went a lil’ extra there, dooz!

Not necessarily in a bad way, but just like, “Oh wow, ok I really do need to work a bit here!” And it led to a few more squirrelly efforts than either of us are used to — first at that chunky house, and then at a couple subsequent jumps when Doozy was maybe feeling a bit less sure.

a bit jittery at the house, but we cleaned it up to finish

It was a good experience for us both, tho, bc obviously… yes the horse can do it, but also yes we both need to stay committed and forward. 

full helmet cam video!!

And it gave Doozy a chance to sorta keep pushing through after a harder-than-usual effort, and smooth it out and gain confidence. She was an actual super star through the little bank complex mini course, and honestly made quite easy work of that somewhat technically challenging line through the water.

sweet mare barely broke a sweat <3 <3

All in all, a really great experience for us both, I think. There are a lot of little details that are obvi still a bit of a mess, but I can also really feel a lot of improvements in the mare even just from all our work with the recorded ride guides. 

Plus it’s just exciting to be doing this again!! It’s kinda crazy wandering around Windurra and gawking incredulously at some of the stuff I jumped a lifetime ago with Charlie… But equally exciting to be forging a new set of memories with this special little red mare <3 <3