On Sunday, OR and I planned to get to the barn at roughly the same time.  Fortunately for my lazy ass, she beat me by about an hour and had a nice little course all set up before I got there.  It's been really great having someone with a comparable skill set.

The downer in this whole situation is that she's moving her horse at the end of the month.  Archie and I will drown our sorrows.

But back to the jumping.  Things that I am uncomfortable with:

• cantering
• jumping
• height
• cantering jumps
• cantering jumps with "height"

The initial set up was a trot pole three strides to a cross rail with a rollback to an 18" vertical and then back up over another 18" vertical.  After Archie was suitably warmed up, I took him over the little line.  And then straight to the vertical, even though there were already angry pythons rolling in my gut.  I knew that if I didn't hit the jumps immediately, they would become bigger and bigger.  He landed the vertical cantering and I brought him back to a trot for the second vertical.

We took turns going through the course, increasing it as we went.  After cantering it, the trot pole was raised to a cross rail and the original cross rail was raised to an 18" vertical.  And after successfully doing that, the last vertical was raised to 2'.

I thought about trotting it.  Honest.  Because even though we'd already jumped that height, even though Archie has jumped crazy stuff a hundred times before, I battle fear with every stride.  So, here's me.  Pushing.

After OR took her horse through the course, we took them back into the woods to walk them out.  I love that the sun is staying out a little bit longer because it means I'll be able to do this stuff more frequently.  The goal is to get him out on the dirt road and galloping by himself.

OR's cameo appearance.

And after everything was done, Archie got liniment and beet pulp for being a good pony.