We go to School

My stomach knotted with a combination of excitement and terror. Nancy and I were on the long drive from our barn to the farm where we were going to have our first real cross country school. I was finally going to start doing the sport I'd always dreamed of.

I was going to die.

We had chosen the venue because it was where our first show was going to be, and we figured we might as well see it and maybe the horses would be more comfortable when we went there for the show weeks later. They had a large variety of fences, ditches, a few waters.

We pulled in, made our payment for schooling, and went to unload the horses. Cappy apparently shared my nervous energy. There was a veritable wall of droppings behind him. You'd think he'd been in the trailer for 12 hours, not the ninety minutes it took to get here.

 I tried to decide if this was an ominous sign.

I tied him to the side of the trailer and threw his saddle on. I put on my tipperary vest, hoping it never came in to use.

When bridling Cappy, you could always gauge his mood. He usually took the bit smoothly. If he resented or hesitated, he generally wasn't in the best mood, and I usually gave him as short and fun of a ride as possible. When he was eager, he opened his mouth and practically lunged for the bit.

This day, he took the bit before I had a chance to orient the bridle.

"Oh, this is going to be good."

Same jump, different day

We climbed aboard and walked around the upper dressage ring. The low black pipes held little interest for Cap... he was staring in fascination all around him, but behaving. We started over some low logs, barely bigger than telephone polls. He was an interesting ride. Willing, but leery... Each jumping attempt was approach, slow, stare, hesitate, enormous jump. There was a rock pile with a pole above it. We nearly levitated over it, landing with all four feet at the same time. My poor friend didn't know whether to laugh herself silly off her horse at our attempts or be concerned for my life.

We approached the water, which he went through with minimum hesitation. We jumped a ditch, with minimum hesitation. We jumped a few more simple log type jumps, which he handled in his normal over achiever fashion, but at least the sequence of footfalls in landing was normal.

I decided to quit while I was ahead.