Cross country schooling at Hilltop

At Hilltop. A whole bunch of us (ok, four of us) packed up and schooled the new x-c course at Hilltop Equestrian Center in Somersworth. Jess on Pooh, Em on Clover—the both of them getting ready for Kingsbury in a week—and Kate on Shadow, as well as me on Bubba. We had a great time, but we were all nervous, too. I was worried about being too tense of a rider for Bubba, but I actually had a lot of fun on him. I still need a lot of help with the flatwork, but over fences he was pretty bold, like Pika was when I helped school him at UNH a few months ago.

My biggest fault was getting too far over Bubba's shoulders with my upper body, but everything else was ok. Even though we were schooling the Elementary course, some of the questions asked of the horses made the obstacles more difficult, so it turned out to be more challenging, but in a good way. We schooled a small drop, a funny brushy fence made out an old street sweeper's brush, and a revetted ditch among other things. Bubba was great—even if he looked hard at a first-time obstacle, he'd go over it, and improve the second time over. He did some greenie-style over jumping. We only had a couple of stops, once was the first time to the ditch, and once at a white picket going uphill. I needed to work on getting him over the center of the jumps, several times my right foot almost took out the flags!

Everyone else had a great time schooling, too. I think we all got a needed confidence boost for the second half of the season.