More jumping.....

Lovely day out today, lots of and fun with the ponies from the riding club at a local showjumping competition. St Antoine sur l'Isle this time, just up the road from St Seurin, but no movie connections and no famous Olympic medal winning horses buried there.........

Ali rode Nikos first, the Fjord cross, but got eliminated as he took exception to the scary red jump (just as he'd done with the first girl to ride him) and he absolutely refused to entertain the idea of going over it.....

But the 80cm class with Nahiade went really well, yes she had a couple down, but the main thing is she was calm and listening and there wasn't any tanking off like last time (even though she was in a Dutch gag, apparently the bitless might not be enough to control her in a public situation, they are more enlightened than most at our club - but bitless competing is still a step too far ). And they came second :-)

 Spent a bit of time grazing Nahiade in hand at lunchtime and discovered that she likes Gingernuts, curry flavoured crisps and beer

   The best round I saw all day was by Carole, Ali's instructor, on one of the livery horses Girlache, who had had a bad experience out jumping previously and was seriously scared at first, rearing and backing off, and she just sat there calmly and gave him the confidence to go and do the round, which he did, getting better and better as he went on

 Nice venue but it was painfully obvious that the "home team" was rather too familiar with the courses and had been so well drilled so they pretty much swept the board.... 

And why do they feel the need to stick tiny kids (wearing spurs) on huge horses (wearing gag bits) all the time over here?