Silver Hills Xc Schooling

“Your life’s course will not be determined by doing the things that you are certain you can do… It will be determined by whether you try the things that are hard” - Sheryl Sandberg

So, on Tuesday, Allie, Andrea, my daughter Evie, my friend Debbi and her horse Fancy and I all went to Silver Hills to school over their cross country course.

Because we have another newcomers (60) this weekend in Camden, I really wanted to get over some bigger intro (80) level jumps, especially the downhill ones, school drops, maybe a ditch or trakehner  if they had one there, and I wanted to get over a couple of big brushes. I have an inkling that there is going to be a big brush downhill at Camden and at my very first hunter trials back in January I rode around it because it was way too intimidating.

Andrea rode first as I had Evie with me so needed to give her some lunch and set up the iPad (plus I didn’t want Andrea to have to push the pram around too much!). She warmed her up and did a few lower logs and a couple of bigger jumps too and did so well! Very proud of them both.

After Andrea and I swapped and I hopped on Allie, we did a few newcomer jumps to get warmed up, then went slowly around the course picking and choosing some jumps to school over, while Debbi did the same with her gelding who had never jumped cross country before. Allie was quite excited to be out jumping again but was NOT as much of a handful as she was at SIEC the other weekend, thank heavens! She was AWESOME to ride and I had a great time!

We schooled over some downhill rolltops that were a bit wide, and we did the big drops in the water complex (that didn’t have any water in it). Then we schooled a downhill ski jump and then did a little mini-course of the ski jump, a large box type rolltop, a large log and a log pile squished between two trees. The last two she FLEW over!

Andrea and I swapped back again and she had another jump while I took Evie for a little walk through the woods to get her little toddler butt moving (as they like to do), then we swapped back and I put the whole intro course together in one hit. Allie was feeling like a superstar by this stage and we even jumped the big white trakehner!! I forgot it had a ditch under it until it was too late but Allie didn’t even look twice, she was on a mission! I whooped and hollered going over it, I was having the time of my life. The brush didn’t cause any issues for us and for the first time ever I was jumping around a cross country course feeling very confident and in control and both myself and Allie were in tune and enjoying every last second of it.

Link to video because I can't get it to embed on mobile.

It was the perfect thing to do the week before a comp. I feel like there isn’t much that will worry me at Camden on Saturday, seeing as I am jumping a level below what we did on Tuesday so confidently. Now, to make sure we don’t bomb the dressage again!