Comment question time.

So I got my first ever comment on this blog asking if I compete on horseback and I realized that my last story really didn't expand past training.

Yeah, I compete, or at least used to before I moved to the city. I owned a couple of horses that ran the rodeo circuit when I was younger and were pretty successful, but mid-teens I made the (BIG) switch from rodeo to showjumping, because I was working on a farm that randomly bought a "Canadian Warmblood" (read: leggy draft-thoroughbred cross) showjumper and was like "hey, let's fix him up because he's broken and see if we can get some shows under him." And so I... learned. Quickly. Because they were paying me.

The thing about showjumping is that you don't have to jump well in order to compete. In the hunter circuit, form is super important, but in comparison even a lot of pro SJers just kinda hold on and go for it. So I got away with my sketchy jumping background (... uh... bareback jumping horses over stacked tree branches on a rodeo farm) for a bit before I switched jobs to a show horse farm (the place I met Mark!) where I got some proper coaching and got a little deeper into the SJ world.

I showed a bunch of SJ events, especially when Mark became a thing. I spent a lot of time with HIS showjumpers, and we did a bunch of traveling and showing with a couple of other riders. I never got very deep into showjumping. I competed a fair amount but got tired of the drama and judgement from the other competitors (I actually got called out by a girl once because the little buckle at the wrist of one of my gloves had snapped, and the strap was hanging. I was sitting on a $10k horse and she called me "practically poverty." And she was like, 19-20 years old. WTF lady!) so I haven't been doing as much lately. I still do the odd show when Mark comes around the province with some young horses who need some little shows.

Mark has since gone on to compete in the big names, though. He's competing in a lot of Grand Prix shows and has ridden alongside some pretty big name people. I just never followed. Didn't have the passion I guess.

Like I said though, still enjoy the odd show and I LOVE jumping... just not competitively.



EDIT:

I'm not lying about the pros and bad jumping.

You Google "showjumping" and you get stuff like this, which is just bad jumping form:





Whereas you also get people like this, which is good jumping form:




But you have to search specific people... that happens to be one of my favorite competitors ever, Eric Lamaze. Gorgeous form and great communication with his animals.