Faith's Jump Practice

We have a break in our show season until August, when we will be attending an East Tennessee Hunter Jumper Show at Stonegate Farms. For all of our English riding team members, this will be their first "hunter" show and they are all looking forward to it and working hard to get ready. Faith has set herself a goal of being able to canter jump the Beginner rider class....which is an 18" course that can be trotted our cantered. I would be thrilled if they could trot it, but Faith wants to work to cantering the course. This means hard work ahead of her until the show. Chip is a great pony and takes good care of Faith....but that doesn't mean he is push button, and Faith has taken her fair share of spills to prove it. Chip was used for Show Jumping previously, so while he loves to jump he tends to get a little too excited at times and likes to go fast and throw himself over them....not exactly what we are looking for in a hunter round. So Faith worked today on trotting the course (we started with crossrails, then added in verticals), which went great so we introduced cantering. He does great over the first jump, but then tries to gun it to the next and over jump it. Faith worked on circling him when he gets cranked in between the jumps until he settles back down, then taking the jump. It seems to be working well and he is slowly getting it. I want to set up some gymnastics for them their next practice to make the pony think a bit....if anyone knows a great intro gymnastic send them our way!

Warming up

Out in the Jump Field