{"id":2947,"date":"2010-03-15T17:55:06","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T17:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2947"},"modified":"2010-03-15T18:00:11","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T18:00:11","slug":"dumped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=2947","title":{"rendered":"Dumped!"},"content":{"rendered":"

How was your show-jumping session with Owen today?<\/em><\/p>\n

Well friend, I’m not terribly glad that you asked.<\/p>\n

We worked in the outdoor arena. The session started with Tom spooking at a flock of killer equine-dissolving\u00c2\u00a0vampire pigeons (the kind that can come out in daylight) that were lurking with murderous intent beneath one of the boundary trees.<\/p>\n

It took almost 20 minutes of working-in before Tom had forgotten them, had jammed his eyes back in to his head and his pulse had dropped back to somewhere near normal. But I couldn’t get his canter back; he was on his forehand and keen to gallop strongly, not particularly interested in achieving the collected, bouncy, off-the-forehand show-jumping canter I was asking for.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we worked through it and, with some fine-tuning from Owen, we jumped a challenging track that he’d built to test us in preparation for Saturday.<\/p>\n

However, on a pass over an altered track (because Owen does like to keep us on our toes), we were in the air over a skinny (a very narrow fence) which we’d reached off a very nicely collected, forward-going canter, when a person with two dogs on leads walked around the corner a couple of metres in front of where we were going to land (but they were outside the arena, obv).<\/p>\n

Tom has obviously not seen people and\/or dogs before. He did a massive spook.<\/p>\n

Except we were in mid-air.<\/p>\n

So as his left forefoot touched the ground, he wheeled around (yes, he actually did a 180-degree turn with just one foot on the ground. Owen later said he’d never seen that done before!), and then flashed off in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately I was still in the air and, equally unfortunately, unlike Tom, I was still subject to the immutable laws of gravity and physics.<\/p>\n

So as Tom vanished from underneath me I found myself rapidly approaching the ground at a speed of around 25 mph and from a height of around 17-hands – plus the 4’3″ we were off the ground.<\/p>\n

And believe me, that’s not only a long way to fall, it’s a fair old speed to be doing the falling at.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it took four or five minutes before I’d got my breath back, I hopped back on and we rode the track three times. Owen changed it once more and we rode that once before calling it a day.<\/p>\n

So now I’m back home.<\/p>\n

The stiffness from the fall is beginning to set in; back, shoulders, neck, head, arms – all of these have been compromised in some way and suffering reduced mobility and a fair old amount of pain. I also had a biggish nose-bleed and bit my tongue, in to the bargain.<\/p>\n

Tom, it must be said, was a total star. We jumped his little (big!) brown bottom off today; Owen threw everything at us – incorrectly-distanced related fences, spooky fillers, skinnies, severe angles and sharp corners.<\/p>\n

I feel we’re just about perfectly prepared for Saturday’s one-day event. I’m under strict instructions to work Tom to the same high standard as one of Owen’s lessons, every day for the rest of the week – which could be tricky if I’m as stiff as an ironing-board for the next few days.<\/p>\n

But that’s my problem, not his.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How was your show-jumping session with Owen today? Well friend, I’m not terribly glad that you asked. We worked in the outdoor arena. The session<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}