Gundagai HT – Showjumping

Welcome back to “Ella goes eventing – part 2” everyone!

 

 

We had a fresh and early start on the Sunday, with a show jumping time of 8.42am. The Saturday night had been… ahem…. “fresh” but alas, I survived the night and was pretty excited to have a play with the big fella over some fences.

I walked the course and the first thing I noticed was how small the arena was, making the course quite twisty with not a lot of room to establish a canter before having to start.

Oh well, hope for the best.

There was one double on course, which I walked and came up with a 1.5 stride.

Super.

Oh well, hope for the best (again).

The warm up was a fenced off section within the jumping arena and also quite small, and not “big-canter friendly”, aka big-canter-with-small-turning-circle-on-a-young-horse friendly. The plus side of this, however, was that the warm up was marshalled and allowed only two people in at a time.

I appreciated that greatly.

 

“Get me out of here right now” – Bumper

 

When we went in he felt good.

Excitable…but good.

The bell rang and I didn’t see much point ducking and weaving between jumps to set up a canter, so as soon as I had a decent one I decided to go for it.

 

 

Bumper was…. slightly confused… about all the changes of direction and where we were going and the general idea of what his job was. So, basically all of it.

All of it confused him.

 

“I am 100% unqualified for this position” – Bumper
PC: Daryl Duckworth Photography

 

But that being said, he did a bang up job and we went clear.

Even over the double where he powered through on the one stride for me instead of chipping, for which I was slightly impressed.

 

“What the hell was that?” – Bumper

When it was over I was once again immeasurably proud and he seemed even more bewildered than after dressage.

Two down, three to go…

 

 

All additional photos courtesy of Petrina White