Late Night Jumping

We practiced jumping tonight with seven riders. It was a long night. I designed a jump course I called "circling the drain". It turned out to be an appropriate name as the horses were not cooperating. It may have been the shadows in the arena or something on the wind but they were spooking at stuff they normally don't have trouble with. We set up a number of tough obstacles including an in-and-out, oxer, water hazard, and of course, the dreaded blue barrels. Charlie and Regent were doing well until Regent began to have problems with the water hazard jump when we raised it to 30 inches. We're not sure why. He could jump it at 24 inches but not 30. Charlie was plowing through the course so fast I think he may have broken the sound barrier. The rest of the horses were experiencing varying degrees of success. We were seeing a lot of refusals and run outs on some of the obstacles. It is amazing to see a 1,200 lb animal come to a complete stop from a gallop within one millimeter of the jump pole. There will be several troopers walking with a hitch in the gait tomorrow.