Rico's First (and Last) Combined Test

So, when Rico hurt his poll in 2006, I decided to jump him. The vet had said that flexing at the poll could be painful, so we mostly did hack-type flatwork and I started him over fences. He was reluctant to jump at first- even going over poles was really tough for him. His first instinct was to stop at them, but I figured that if we just kept pressing on, things would get better. And they did. Soon he was okay jumping fences with no filler, but filler was always really tricky for him.

In early 2007, I had him going okay over small fences and decided to take him to a show. It was a combined test, so we did the easy walk-trot dressage test and then went in for our tiny little stadium round. Let me tell you a story in pictures.

In the warm up things went well! You can see that the jumps
were so small that he could step over them and there was no filler.

He was downright chill over the first fence! Good boy, Rico.

Got a bit of a funky distance to the next fence, but that's okay

Definitely not touching jump three

Getting pretty into it now!

A bit close maybe

For sure not touching that shit

This is reasonable too, good boy Rico

But then... 

Rico sees the most terrifying thing

We are NOT jumping that

Missed him standing up, then I turned around and tried again

Okay maybe we'll go this time

Wait wait wait no maybe not this time

Rico says hell no

Let's go this way instead

Wherein I basically just spur the shit out of him

Okay I guess I have to jump this

Oh no it's happening

Gotta keep an eye on it in the air though

I withdrew after that. The last fence was that plank cross rail that he had spooked at earlier and I wanted to make sure we ended on a good note.

Rico went on to be a good jumper later on... he always had issues with filler though. 

He figured it out though