GRS Goes to Foggy River

So we went to Foggy River today. Took Sienna, Stephy/Nea, Nicole/Ned, and Rachel/Moe. Nea and Ned both on their 2nd ever attempt, and the Rachel/Moe combo was a first for both of them :) Miss Sienna got a really easy day since I had to spend more time teaching than riding hahaha and I was pleased to discover C is *very* patient about standing around quietly while everybody else jumps!

Day started out well w/ everybody loading easily. Woohoo. Got there to discover it was stupidly cold (but at least not snowing the way it was at Glen Oro!!!) and very very windy. Great scenario to take green-beans xc. Classic. Everybody gets on and hacks to the stadium ring. On grass and outlined but not actually fenced. Kerri came with us (thanks tons Ker!!!) and kindly made the stad fences baby sized. We took our time warming up and getting everybody (horses AND riders) settled before jumping. W/u in stad ring was good -- everybody got their horses jumping with a reasonable amount of confidence and those with limited experience on hills got the chance to try jumping with slight terrain changes. AND there were a couple XC jumps in the stad ring, so the logical progression went well. Our hunter rider was none to sure about this idea, but she found her courage somewhere ("Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." <-- Ambrose Redmoon) and joined in. Her horse absolutely loved this idea and did a great job with it, which certainly helped her out.

Then we moved out of the ring -- and anything goes :) Over a little log, up and down several banks (this had a *little* drama the first time for Nea :), through a line, over stone walls, tires, everything! It was amazing. The two horses that wouldn't move without a leader last weekend were prostars this time. "Yup, I got it. Where's the next one?" Willingly jumping anything we could find of appropriate height.

"I'm not doing that." "Yes you are." *insert rider jumping fence* "see, I told you you could do it! . . . Now go do it again." *rider rolls eyes* hahaha this was pretty well the script for the day :)

So by the end, the riders who weren't too sure to begin w/ were jumping everything, and the horses were searching around for what fence was next. Overall *such* a good school! Am so proud of all the riders AND horses. Woohoo!!!!!!

Pics (thanks *again* to Kerri) will be up shortly!