Horse&Rider’s Deputy Editor Jane Gazzard
Talk about the cat who got the cream! After three years of telling myself I would never leave the ground again, I came into the Horse&Rider office grinning from ear to ear!
The reason being that I have, in fact, just left the ground on a horse and now I’m flying around on cloud nine! I had my first jumping lesson in three years with a friend of mine, intermediate eventer and BHSII instructor, Selena Farmer, and I’ve loved every minute of it.
Okay, it may only have been a couple of feet off the ground, but I’m ecstatic that I’ve had the confidence to even consider jumping again. I’d had no real ambitions or incentives to do it, following a knock to my confidence a few years ago with my very unbrave eventer. However, I’m sure that having an ex-Grade A showjumper who’s now doing dressage and needs a bit more variety in his life, has had an awful lot to do with it.
So with steely determination, I decided to give it a go again and the confidence my beloved Hendy has given me is second to none. However, having a horse who really knows his job has obviously helped give me the psychological boost I needed and going into my lesson, I had absolutely no fear or apprehension. I trusted Hendy completely and knew that he’d look after his dear old mum.
But he really came into his own at the end of the lesson when Selena had a pop on him. We kept putting the jump up three holes at a time for her, until it was about 1.20m and you could see Hendy thinking, “At last, a jump I can get my teeth into!” And it was a joy to watch him go on to automatic pilot, locking on to the jump and drawing Selena in like a magnet. He loved it!
And am I going to do it again? Absolutely!
Tags: confidence, eventer, jumping, poles, showjumping
