Aiken Spring 2024: Part 4 | DQ goes airborne

Final installment! Lucky you. haha

Day 8:

After a day of lessons, we had another "f-around day" on Wednesday and decided to just stay at Jumping Branch and see what trouble we could get into.

You KNOW there was shenanigans when the dressage gal puts on a XC vest!

Another group of Louisville eventers had joined us at JBF and we had a BLAST just being horse girls with our horses. There was so much fun and laughter and truly that is what this is all about.

Hampton played professor and did some changes and piaffe for a couple of friends. I did some twos and ones up a slight incline in the field which really helped me open him up because he was pretty much forced to jump "uphill." 

But my FAVORITE part of this day and one of the most awesome moments of the trip was hopping on a friend's event horse (he goes Modified but barely has to try at that level). It turns out I am actually not the chicken I thought I was about jumping. This horse gave me so much confidence. I ended up jumping some BN jumps, a tiny drop into water and then a girthy monster Training level table which to many is probably not a big deal but people I do not jump things these days and it has been PROBABLY A DECADE or more since I jumped much above 2'3 or 2'6.

My stirrups felt SO SHORT. haha. Thank you Eli for being a unicorn!

The point is ... I think my next horse is going to need to be able to jump because I fell back in love with it. 

Day 9:

On Thursday we had one more day of lessons with the S judge. Another solid lesson where she really got after me about keeping my left leg forward, and more specific and clear with my aids. Hampton did start to feel tired this day, which I mean SO WAS I.

More takeaways -

• Lead with your inside hand/rein in the pirouettes
• "Settle" before starting the turn
• Accuracy when starting half passes
• Let go of outside rein in halfpass sometimes
• No indirect rein on outside rein. Keep hand away

We worked a bit more on piaffe/passage and Hampton was more than happy to show off his Spanish walk skills. Pretty much all the time. lol. He was like "Bitch, which party trick to you want." I don't know whether it was the right thing to do to teach him this or not, but here we are. 

Yet another amazing, exhausting, stupidly fun trip to Aiken. So grateful I was able to go and am in a position to do this with great friends and the horses that make it possible.

And thank you Jumping Branch Farm for being such wonderful hosts and such a lovely play to stay for both humans and horses.