Rock Star Status

The title of this post obviously refers to Limerick, who was beyond fantabulous today! I'm not gonna lie, the last time we went XC schooling, he flipped his shit when other horses got to jump before him, proceeded to refuse a starter coop with my trainer onboard, and kind of made me question whether or not I'd ever be able to handle him (this was in August, maybe 3 weeks after I got him). As you can imagine, I was nervous and went in expecting the worst, which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when everything WAY surpassed my expectations :)

We started out watching Collyn and Frankie go around the training/prelim course for at least an hour, calmly standing and filming them the whole time and taking a minute to splash in the water. Let me just say that C+F are total badasses and I want to be them someday! Limerick started out ok, though a little bit nervous and insecure when Frankie wasn't in sight, but he calmed down as soon as we turned to watch them go or walked around a little bit to get out his jitters.

Then, Limerick and Frankie trotted/raced back to the starter course, and it was our turn to have fun :) S started the lesson by having us hack around the field, doing some trot and canter work. We had to canter downhill, which made me more nervous than anything else we did, but is SO much easier when I just lean back! We moved on to jumping one starter fence at a time, slowly moving around the field and occasionally jumping the middle fence. We jumped a little log, to a brown coop, to a white coop, to a black coop, to a stone wall, to a little wood jump with three poles, to barrels, to tires! I think I got all of those in the right order...

None of them presented any real problems, though some of them elicited bigger jumps from Limerick than others. There were also a few that he tried to get his head down afterwards, and I don't really know what that was about, but I'll chalk it up to a little bit of back soreness. He's getting adjusted on either Monday or Wednesday of this week, so YAY for that! I also got to use my new cooler today, and I highly recommend it! It's a weatherbeeta and actually does what it's supposed to do, as in doesn't make Limmers sweat more!

The day could not have gone better and was such a good first experience for Limerick and me :) He got a whole bucket of Nicker Doodles and lots of love, as well as some liniment on his legs and turn out when we got home. I can't wait to go schooling again and can't thank S, E, G, and Collyn enough!

Here's the video: (sorry it's mostly unedited, I suck at iMovie..)

Some pictures:

The cooler! Kind of weird, but super effective and the first one I've ever used that doesn't cause him to get hotter

Gorgeous ending to a gorgeous and perfect day :) 

Schooling Day!

Lately, I've had a lot of people telling me that I need to get Limerick off the farm as often as possible, so I have decided to start seizing all of the opportunities that are thrown my way. Unfortunately, I waited too long to write this post, so I don't remember all of the details. But, here's the short version: 

Limerick was a gem, a saint, and the perfectest pony I could ever ask for, all rolled up into one big ball of love! I was nervous about how he would act off-property (nutty reputation, remember..), so I wasn't riding my best and kind of relied on him to make the decisions. He totally took care of me! We jumped around in the indoor at the farm, had a full jump lesson with S, and then headed outside to test his behavior in the outdoor. At that point, I had remembered how to use my legs/hands/body/brain, so we actually had some lovely trot and canter work. We also had quite a funny moment where I bumped Lim with my spur for a trot-canter transition, and we crow-hopped/cow kicked for a couple of small circles... it was like riding some weird up and down rocking horse, and I was giggling the whole time :)  

Anyways, Collyn was kind enough to record a good portion of our jump lesson, so here you go:

Also, a huge thanks to her for hauling us there!! Obviously, it couldn't have happened without her awesomeness!