Hurricane Fail, and JUMPIN'!

I forgot to mention the other day that I had my first brush with a real hurricane. So unimpressive was this supposed massive storm that I didn't even remember to write about it. Quick, steal food and horde gas!! Dry dock your boats, take cover!! And then we didn't even get so much as a light breeze. Hurricane Earl's new name = Hurricane Fail. Seriously, I was disappointed. And also annoyed because if we don't get some sort of rain sometime in the next century, all my grass will turn to dust. I can't imagine my boarders would be very pleased with that.

Gogo continues to be spectacular under saddle. Following our great dressage ride Saturday, I hacked her for 45 minutes bareback around the property on Sunday, and yesterday opted to give her a 'jump' day. I think I want her schedule at this point to go something like this: 'Jump' day, hack day, dressage day, 'jump' day, hack day, dressage day, day off. Or something like that. It's pretty flexible at this point, the only condition being that if she does good hard work one day, she automatically gets a nice hack day the next. Hacks right now consist of walking bareback around the rolling hills of our property for an increasing 5 minutes every time, and throwing in a little bit of trot if there is a flat place to do so. She did trot a few steps up a tiny incline today - she had SO much energy and felt SO good after yesterday! But I digress. Let me backtrack....


Last night, after a 15 minute walk hack around the property, I set up several trot poles as I have been doing, and then also added the world's tiniest crossrail, pictured right. We have been stepping over bigger logs on the perimeter trail every day, so it was time to try something at the trot - but only if she felt good and ready. The warmup she gave me was excellent, and it felt like her head was really in the right place, so I opted to give it a try. She walked over the jump while on the buckle, seemingly disinterested: "So what, big deal. I walk over bigger stuff every day." And then we tried it at the trot.

As expected, I got a lot of WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!




I had trot poles set up earlier in the line, but she saw the jump ahead of her and started leaping over them, so I opted to do a big circle around to the jump and not give her too big of a runway. She launched twice, left my butt behind, and celebrated on the other side with dramatic headshakes, leaps and a full-on bronc moment where she came to a stop but continues to bounce up and down with all four off the ground, arching her neck and doing what I quite imagine looked something like this. Alas, we missed that part on video!

Finally, it all came together like this:




SO AWESOME.


On September 12th, it will be a year since the original injury. That is something I can hardly believe. We've come so far, and worked so hard for moments like these. I honestly think she's moving better now than she ever has... she really grew up over the past year. Ups and downs, highs and lows, you've seen it all. In the end, seeing how happy she is and how good she feels, it's all worth it.