Gia - session 751 - jumper show

I took Gia to the Sedgefield Jumper show yesterday.  She was pretty good on the lunge line, but not very good in her under saddle warm up.  She was VERY tense, and threw in a lot of bucks while trotting and jumping.  I focused on keeping her hind end straight, and not letting it swing out to the right like it likes to do.  I also focused on keeping my hands down, which helped to keep her forward whenever I had to disengage her from a buck.  It took a while, but I finally got a few jumps in a row that did not involve bucking, so we headed to the show ring.   

The show ring was a COMPLETELY different story!  I had entered her in the 2'6" open jumper classes.  This was a bit higher than she has jumped in competition so far, but I hoped that the height would make her focus a bit more, and, to be honest, I didn't really want to wait around until the end of the day for the 2' division (we had been up since 5:30am).

In her first class, I had planned on trotting in to the first jump, and then just seeing how she did from there with trot vs canter.  I had not been able to ask her for the canter in my warm up, we had only been able to get the canter after first trotting over a jump.  The first half of the course was a bit messy, but not naughty at all!  I started out riding a bit defensively, but once I realized that she actually WAS going to behave, I rode a little more "correctly" and supportive.  She finished the course much better than she started!  It was a Blue/Red class (the judge decides if your jumper ride was correct or if you had mistakes, and you get a blue ribbon vs a red ribbon).  We had a rail down and a couple of time penalties, so we got Red for this one.

In her second class, we both felt MUCH more confident!  I still trotted in to the first jump, but she cantered almost all of the rest of it, and it was soooo much smoother and flowy!  We did pull two rails, but we still managed to get a 4th place ribbon and $10 in prize money!