Making Oxers My B

May 27, 2015 Lauren Mauldin Comments 30 comments

Last week before my jaunt to NC and the Memorial Day Texas flood, I was able to ride my horse for two days. It was amazing.

One of those days happened to be a jumping lesson, and in a show of great maturity I took a last minute half day from work and headed to the barn for an earlier lesson. We hadn’t jumped in well over a week and more rain was in the forecast, so my trainer wasted no time setting up a course.

A course full of oxers.

When I say full of oxers, I mean every jump was an oxer except two… maybe three. Since no one had been riding, they were set small at 2’3″ – 2’6″ but they were still there in all of their airy glory.

My suspicions were that my trainer knew that Simon and I would be so excited to jump or lesson at all, that we wouldn’t notice all the oxers everywhere. Either that or she took the opinion that when you get to ride 6 days out of the entire month of May, you put on your big girl panties and jump the damn oxers.

Either way, I jumped the oxers.

Our warm up course was okay. Nothing tragic happened and I pretended the oxers weren’t there. Simon behaved normally, which is to say he tra la laled along quite happily.

Then the next real course needed to happen with all the oxers. Not only where there all the oxers, but the first jump was an oxer. We cantered up to it with a pretty normal pace, but I didn’t see a distance. While I’m proud of myself for not leaning (lesson learned maybe?), I also didn’t do anything to correct.

We chipped.

It wasn’t even a bad chip, but Simon was NOT happy. After the fence, he actually tried to buck(?) a little.

From then on, every oxer was met with gusto!

Any reservations I had about the sea of oxers melted away, because my horse was totally on point. There was no way he was going to chip or get too close to one of those oxers, but at the same time he was super rideable.

In the few lines we had, I felt him wait for my signal in the line. Did I want him to add or go for the stride? When I pushed my hands forwards a little and applied some leg, I could feel him go “Good choice!” and lengthen his stride.

Basically, this:

30 thoughts on “Making Oxers My B”

YAY!! Great update. So happy for you!

haha love the gifs! also, little secret, in real life (aka, not in our heads where all things are wrong), oxers are much easier to jump than verticals 🙂 the just look scarier. glad you conquered them!

HIGH FIVE!!!!!

Hooray! Rollerskate pony gif is officially my new favorite gif!

I am in the process of learning that if you don’t see a distance, MOAR LEG!!! 🙂

Good job! I must be one of the weird ones but I think big airy verticals are way scarier than oxers. Give me a course of oxers any day.

Olivia Carr says:
May 27, 2015 at 12:35 pm
Same here! Something about the bulk makes them seem more approachable. Oxer lovers unite!
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Karen M says:
May 27, 2015 at 4:09 pm
Same here, I’d rather jump oxers.
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Don’t you love those days?! I need to jump tonight. I have a friend bringing me ice cream (yes, for real!) so I am going to make him set jumps for me, and maybe take some pics?!
I hope it goes as well as your mega oxer lesson! Yay for good riding days!

Yay! That’s so awesome! Hopefully when you get another dry patch you can pick up that forward momentum. Doesn’t it feel great to go forward and hit everything just right?!?!

This. Is. Awesome. YAYYYYY!!! (Meaning the jumping overs and the gifs. All very, very awesome :)).

Yay for good Simon time! I love the Ice Age/Scrat gif. hahahah. I can appreciate that sentiment with other things. 🙂

Yay! Funny after taking a break oxers aren’t scary to me anymore. At least at 2’6″ and under. But gates, walls etc with weird fill still get me nervous because those are what makes Holly nervous. Hope you get to ride again soon!

I need to add a paper bag to my show kit. Good idea. Also, love the sparkly pony at the end – that’s pretty much all Simon!

Whoop whoop!! Great job!!

Way to go!!!

Way to go!!! Also, that last gif…Bringing me back to the MySpace days.

Yaaay good job!

And where did that people-roller-skating-in-a-horse-costume-and-tripping gif come from because that thing is GOLD.

Boom! Totally rockin’ it.

YAY! Well done 😀

I’m one of those weirdos that actually like oxers. I feel like they encourage horses to jump across them. If feel like it makes my job easier.

i love this whole post haha! i just try to repeat after myself over and over “oxers help the horse jump better… oxers help the horse jump better” … not sure it makes a difference but ultimately i think you’re right – nailing that first one makes the rest feel fine 🙂

YOU ROCKED IT!! Yeah! I love everything about this post. Especially the first and last two gifs, which are my life in a nutshell. Those are basically the only two emotions I have, at any given time.

Giflicious!

Yeah! Sounds like an awesome ride!

<3 So awesome! So happy for you!

Abby: It's from MXC (Most Extreme Elimination Challenge) which is/was a show based on the Japanese show Takeshi's (sp?) Castle, and it's hilarious! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MXC