Waitangi Day

Waitangi Day (Feb 6th for overseas readers :-) is an important day in my house. It is:

1) Sammie's birthday. She turned seven this year.

2) The day that I bought Spyke. One of my better decisions. I have had him two years.

3) The day I retired Tai. One of my sadder decisions. He has been retired for about 5 years now.

This Waitangi Day was my first attempt at cross country with Spyke (yes, two years after buying him. LOL. What can I say? I am a wuss.) I went to Greenhithe Pony Club practise cross country with Kristina (on Oscar), Sarah (on Em) and Rachael (on Bert). It was Bert and Oscar's first ever cross country, it was Spyke's first in two years and my first in over six years so there was some achievements to be made.

Spyke and I didn't have a brilliant start at the first jump. He did the whole 'that is so scary, I can't possibly go near it' thing, including a half rear. Grrrr. However, I MADE him jump and then we jumped it a few more times working our way up to the training size. Here he is doing the training one in fine style.

The next few jumps were just as sticky. Spyke was quite nappy and didn't want to leave the other horses and I was still very nervous as I didn't really know what to expect from him. The second jump was just a small upright and the third was a table top (that, once he agreed to jump it, he jumped very nicely). Next was an old water jump that was dry. Spyke did the drop very happily and trotted throught with a bank followed by a small upright. While we were lurking around there was a lot of yahooing coming from the water jump in the next paddock and Spyke just started to wind up a bit, which scared the living daylights out of me. He soon settled though. The next jump was a box with agapanthas in front of it, well he wasn't having a bar of that one. We had to do the little pre-intro jump and then came back around to jump the proper jump. Next was a corner and once again he ran out to start with but then I got him over twice (with Bert standing next to the jump to stop run outs).

Our next jump was the turning point for us. We did the intro size jump on the side of a hill. The pretraining one was right next door so it meant I could aim Spyke at the end of the intro and he couldn't run out and had to jump, which he did. I then kept him going forward and went round to the chair. He started to spook but after the success of the previous jump I was able to have enough confidence to push him into it and he jumped it fabulously. From there on there were no more stops and we started to jump some of the bigger jumps. He was FANTASTIC!!!!!

We even jumped the pallisade!!! I have to admit though, I didn't actually realise that it was a pallisade until I was about 2 strides away. By that time I was committed and kicked Spyke on. He, of course, didn't bat an eyelid and flew it!!! We had to come around and jump it again so that Nicky couldtake a picture. He pecked slightly before take off and I ended up jumping before he did, hence the SHOCKING position. LOL. (Hmmm must shorten my stirrups)

After the pallisade we did a ramp, the water and a few smaller jumps and then we jumped the first jump backwards.

I was thrilled with how Spyke did the second half of the course and my confidence was really improved by the end of the day. I think once we have done a couple more practise days we will be ready to do an actual ODE. The others (Kristina, Sarah and Rachael) all had a fabulous afternoon too. Oscar was calm and sensible and did some lovely little jumps, Em was the world's best baby sitter and Bert was LOVING cross country by the end of it. More pics:

Spyke in the background, Oscar in front.

Away from the horses I have been painting my wagon (Hmmmm I think there is a movie in there somewhere :-). Here are a couple of pikkies of the progress. They are taken with my phone so aren't great but I will download proper ones soon.

Stage one:

Stage two: