Bounces? Check.

Yesterday, after a particularly hellish afternoon at work in which I was on the phone with Quickbooks for over 2 hours, I departed the office with a massive headache. And I was SO CLOSE to skipping the barn in favor of going home to drink copious amounts of vodka red wine.

But I had spent a good hour setting up the gymnastics/course on Sunday night, and damnit, I wanted to try it. So I headed to the barn and tacked up my horse, while downing 800mg of Ibuprofen.

So we did a little warmup. ALL the transitions. Ya know, the works. And then it was time.

Here’s a confession: P’s seen a bounce exactly one time in his life. And he was, well, 4, so about 3 1/2 years ago. The first time we went through, he took the bounce as an oxer…which was super fun. NOT. And then we moved to the HJ barn where I was stuck with a permanent hunter course. All the gymnastics we’ve done at Trainer B’s and anywhere else have been 1+ strides. So I have a mental hangup when it comes to bounces. Especially 4 in a row. But I grabbed some mane and prepared myself for him to either slam on the brakes or take a flying leap.

Ummm, k. Who are you and what have you done with the real Pilgrim? This horse used to get flustered and STOP at multiple trot poles and here he is now, taking a sea of jumps in stride. Naturally I didn’t support him enough with my leg going in, but he broke to the trot for a second, assessed the situation, and kept going. What a difference. So we went through again off the left lead.

Much better, though my position left something to be desired. It all goes out the window when I’m unsure of how P will react to something. I’m trying to be better about that. So I asked Husband to stack another plank on the last jump and had another go-round.

And quit right there. There was just no need to do it again after that. He felt amazing and I felt pretty solid in the tack (except the last bounce when my shoulders were creeping forward). I was tempted to just keep going around the course, but my head was pounding and I still hadn’t made any of the jumps bigger than probably 2′. And it was P’s second day back after being off for ANOTHER week. So I’m erring on the side of quitting too early vs pushing for too much, which has been the name of the game with Trainer B and has obviously paid off in the long run. But holy smokes, that was fun.

He’s just one super cool dude. Most of the time.