We were meant to be having a jumping lesson with Richard on Shadow but Shadow had come in from the field on Saturday lame poor girl!!! So while she has some time to recover we thought it would be nice to introduce Katrina (Lantana's stable name) to jumping with a good instructor and as we were sharing the lesson with another green horse, it seemed the ideal time. We had originally planned to get her introduced to jumps with a professional rider, but we decided that we trusted Richard to look after us and make sure I got it right.
I was actually very worried that I'd get it all wrong and mess up Katrina's jumping forever, so it was important that I listened to Richard. As we entered the school, Katrina felt really worried about the jumps, her eyes were on stalks, so we followed Kelsea around while she was riding until Richard asked me if I thought I was playing follow the leader!!! Told off before I even got out of trot, oops!!!
First we had to jump a cross pole, and Katrina was not convinced AT ALL! These could be horse eating poles people!!! She stopped and refused to move and eventually Richard put down one side and I manged to get her to step over it!!! Yay!!! She was very brave because she was worried, but she did do it. Richard made us go over all different fences, they were really tiny, but that wasn't the point, she had a look at them all but eventually came round and went over every singe one. She felt really wobbly, but she got better and better every time we tried and she even jumped an upright first time. I think she's going to enjoy it once the penny drops.
Then Richard put in the caterpillar fiillers on one fence. Katrina couldn't wrap her head around the fact that if you jumped the middle of the fence, they wouldn't come near you!!! But bless her, she was so honest about it all, a little confused and worried but she was trying!! Richard told me that we needed to stop doing so much poncy dressage and stop being so precious with her!!! I did keep trying and she was so good, she was worried but even though she was hesitant she did go over it every time. Caterpillars look like snakes Katrina says, and evey horse knows you can't trust them can you?
By the end, we managed to get a little course done with only 4 faults for knocking over a pole and we even got over the filler on first attempt!!! I've attached the video. So proud of Katrina, she was so good! Thanks to Kelsea for putting up with me, Wendy for arranging it, Richard for teaching me, and mum for being so suppportive when I was scared because I wasn't sure I wanted to be the one to properly introduce her to jumping with a rider and I as scared of doing something wrong, but she was right, I feel really proud that Katrina and I did it. And thank you to my lovely sponsors The Emporium at Wentworth and Stonehouse Solutions, you're just great!!!