I've added showjumping to my CV

As you can tell I have had a busy time recently and some of the best fun I have had is learning to show jump. I'm a very lucky pony because I have the wonderful Polly Williamson teaching Mum, and she's very good at getting Mum to ride me properly. Polly is very clever and understands that if us ponies are going to perform at our very best then we need our riders to be in the correct position so they don't interfere with our amazing jumping abilities. 

Polly used to ride at an International level competing at Badminton (been there done that, honest I've ridden around Badminton just go read my blog) and Burghley (ok so I haven't done Burghley yet!). Unfortunately Polly had a very very very serious riding accident that left her in hospital and a coma for ages. Times a great healer and Polly is a very determined lady (well you have to be if your competing at that level) and she has made an amazing recovery through a lot of hard work and I am now very very lucky to have her teaching us. Polly doesn't ride any more but I think that is what makes her an amazing teacher because she has to think about how she would have ridden me and then has to get Mum to do it instead. 

She's very good at telling Mum what to do in very uncomplicated language. I've found Mum doesn't do so well with technical teachers that use posh horsey terms (Mum never had lessons as a child (can't I tell) so she's not up on all the technical speak) and it just intimidates Mum.  Polly puts it in plain English and makes Mum focus on doing what's right. A good example is teachers will often tell humans to not lean forward, yeah so what do the humans do they still lean forward because that is what they are thinking about. Polly is clever though she gets them to think about heels down and having a string pulling them up from their tummy button, hey presto human is sitting upright. 

I mustn't give away all Polly's tops tips, any ponies (or horses) interested in having their humans trained better please let me know I have Polly's number on speed dial and we can get your human fixed in no time at all. 

It's thank to all Polly's hardwork that we we came 2nd and 4th in our first ever showjumping competition at Chelworth Fields http://www.chelworthfields.co.uk. Ponies if you want somewhere friendly, warm and welcoming then definitely take your owners there it's great. 

You can see us in action at http://youtu.be/lGWmjt8ttQw. 

Thank you for a great Gridwork lesson today Polly, think Mums really getting the hang of making me trot with power but not too much speed as it meant I could jump a 75cm (2'6" in old money) grid, no problems, bring on my next jumping competition 😀