Welcome to XC :)

My superstar pony is going to be a XC machine!   OMG I had so much fun.   And no, I'm not lucky enough that he's actually my horse, but for simplicity's sake, we'll be referring to him as mine in the "horse that I'm currently riding" meaning for the foreseeable future :)

And yes, she who hasn't jumped in two years, took her jumper horse who's never done XC, and decided that would be the best way to start back ;-P.  You're not new here.

In his nice, new, loose ring snaffle (lol his "jumper" bit is way too strong for dressage) we warmed up, I decided he was much happier in that bit, and we went out back.  Note, we did not bother with a tack change here.  Worked for a bit on the flat just to ensure the brain didn't get lost when we left the ring.   All good.   Through the water, up and down the bank -- totally pro.  Then we did the baby ditch and the slightly bigger ditch -- baby ditch was no problem but he was a little confused and very awkward about the slightly bigger one.  By the second try he had the idea and by the third try was doing it well though!

Now, I've seen vid of his other pb'r jumping sticks and very out of control (both enjoying themselves and not at all dangerous, just not ideal) so I wasn't sure what we'd get on XC, but I knew he was new to it so figured meh, why not?   We have some very tiny jumps to play with.   So we trotted over a few and he was very confused, but oh so quickly the light went on.   And before too long he was landing and scanning for the next one -- awesome!  Except, of course, he has no interest in letting me have a say in which one is next ;).

I also had no steering and limited breaks.   If I could package him and hold a line though -- all the power and enthusiasm.   So I'm *really* looking forward to the rest of the summer.  But those basics need a lot of work first *sigh*.  I think we'll be trotting our XC fences for a while yet.   But he did all the PE and E course, so not bad for a first day :).  And trotted and cantered between fields with little more than a glance, so that was awesome.

His pilot, however, was a whole lot looser in the tack than I'd like.  Sheesh.  Jump school tomorrow...  Hopefully won't be too embarrassing!

All the fun though.  Still grinning like a kid.