"look Ma, no hands!"

[quietann]

goddessfarmer likes to push me with the jumping, so here we are going through a 2 fence "bounce" with no hands. The rail is about 2'3" I think. She also had me do it with reins but no stirrups, and then as a three-jump "bounce" (and she let me have my reins and stirrups back.)

(Sorry the images are so dark; it's really hard to photograph at high noon in this indoor ring without using a flash, and there's only so much photo editing I can do...)





Leg too far back, sigh. This is actually the first jump in the bounce.


J taking Trumpie through the same bounce, except with 3 fences and much better equitation:




After this, deguspice met me for lunch at a yummy roast beef place, and then I went to Windrush to help with the therapeutic riding. The teenage boys who help get the horses ready were once again sweet kids; but every week we will have only one who has been before, and three new ones, and almost none of them have ever been around horses before. I also found out that for most of them, this is "community service" work as part of a misdemeanor conviction. Still, I am very impressed with their willingness to try, and how very very good they are with the therapeutic riders.

We took the riders on a trail ride today, which was a lot of fun, if a bit chaotic with 5 riders, each of whom has a horse handler and two sidewalkers. My kid was really distracted by all the nature around him, and very hard to engage during the various exercises the kids do while riding. He's still a nice kid. He rides Bucky, an ancient retired polo pony who has Seen It All.

Sadly, it looks like Windrush at one point had a nice little cross-country course set up in the fields and woods, but I don't think they let people use it anymore. Lots of lower-level fences I would love to try, and a few harder ones. Sigh...