KHJA Pony Club Show Day 2 - Jumpers

Day 2 of the KHJA Pony Club Show was Jumper day.  I was most excited for this day and was happy that the threat of thunderstorms held off and they just delayed the show an hour and a half to accommodate the weather passing through.  Chloe looked a little surprised when I trekked out to the pasture to get her but was a complete doll getting on the trailer to go to day two of the show.

We immediately claimed the paddocks we had used the day before and Chloe just dropped her head to eat grass upon being released into the paddock with her pasture buddy.  We had a bit of a rush to get ready for our 2' Hopeful Jumper division as there were no entries in the 18" division that was being run prior to our classes.  No need to worry, Chloe walked quietly to the warm-up area and stood quietly to be mounted.  Huge improvement from the day before when she did two big spooks in a row walking past the bleachers when she realized there were HORSES in the arena....*faceplam*.

Pasture buddies at the show are the BEST!

Whee!

We walked quietly around the teeny warm-up for a few laps and then I had to use LEG to get the mare to move forward!  Lesson learned, jump a bunch of courses the day before you want to do hunters and the mare will be SUPER QUIET.  Warm-up was short and sweet.  Then we stopped to learn the course.  I was a little worried about the courses because for a beginner level division, the courses were VERY technical with several tight turns, which we have not really gotten into yet.  Our division was Optimum Time, so I wasn't too worried about our speed and just wanted to focus on getting over all the jumps.

I took a deep breath and trotted into the ring resolved to do whatever it took to make the tight turns work without circling if at all possible.  Chloe immediately decided that the poles and flower boxes set against the arena wall were absolutely going to eat her.  She offered quite a nice haunches in all the way to the first jump.  And then when she realized she didn't have to be pretty, she just had to get the job done, she relaxed and happily went forward over every jump.  I almost fell off around the turn from fence 3 to fence 4 as apparently the billets on my saddle have started to break in and between the saddle's tendency to slide a litte forward on Chloe's downhill built back and the billets, the girth became a little loose when the saddle slipped forward!  You can't really see it in the video but I stepped down really hard in the left stirrup to fix it and then tried my best to stay super balanced the rest of the course.   

I just thought this still was cool.

Our trip was good enough for 4th and I was pretty thrilled with Chloe, mostly because even though she didn't like the flowers against the rail just on the other side of the first jump, she forgot all about them once she locked on to the first jump.

One of these days she will be less hollow...

Next round was more of the same, pretty technical turns for a beginner division but Chloe listened and tried to do everything I asked her.

Our round put us in 6th place, still good enough for some satin!

Last round was the Jackpot class and Chloe and I were both starting to feel kind of tired from our classes yesterday, but she still went into the arena and tried her heart out.  All of the clear rounds came back to do a jump-off, which I don't have on video.  We pulled one rail because I rated her a little too much coming into the fence and she got a little too close and is still figuring out how to rock back onto her haunches (which were a little sore from the jumping on Saturday so I don't really blame her).

Even with our rail, we were good enough for 3rd place (thank you Optimum Time!) and almost enough prize money to pay for one of our hunter classes!

Still with eyes and ears on those horse-eating flower boxes!

All in all, I am so proud of Chloe and how professional she acted at her first show!  No major spooks or issues and I think she went even better at the show than she does at home.  Perhaps the mare is a bit of a show-off.... :)