I had to share a quick video of my daughter suffering at the hands of her own mother’s forgetfulness. I had a course set in my arena that had been set at 3′ for a week or so. 3′ is right around the limit for Sadie and her 22 year old mare, Socks, without a pretty decent jumping warm-up. Socks was my former 1.40m jumper, so she’s definitely got more in her. But at 22, the least we can do is get her nice and limber before putting the fences up more!
I completely forgot that I had moved several jumps up to 3’6″ when I had ridden FF Evita right before we rode the next two. And so I had Sadie go around the course of mostly crossrails and a few 3′ jumps. Well, the oxer into the 1-stride was still 3’6″, and boy did it surprise me when Socks jumped so hard over what I still thought was a “little 3′ fence.” I was thinking that maybe it was time to step her down a bit more when it dawned on me that I had just had my poor kid and her (even poor-er) horse head into a 3’6″ line with next to no warm-up. Yikes! Good girl, Socks!