A few months ago my fearless leader found out that I own spectacles.

And ever since……. they have been required attire for jumping.

See the story here if you missed it. Can You See it?

Fast forward 6 months.

I honestly don’t know if the goggles have anything to do with this……..but for the first time in my life……………

I’ve started seeing distances in the turns before the jump.

Last weekend I went to a last minute schooling show. Did you know that was even possible? In my last state of residence, that kind of thing just didn’t happen. Welcome to Area III.

I was doing my second jumper course on the Zebrasaurus. And something that has never happened before………happened.

I was seeing my spot in the turn.

I turned to the first jump…… and in the turn I SAW that I was going to get to it perfectly……

Then the second jump I saw that I needed to move up, just a bit, and I did, and it was perfect.

When I came to the third jump and the same thing happened, I started doing this in my head.

This continued until jump #8, and by then my ego was in full on party mode.

And then, it happened.

I didn’t see it.

I didn’t see ANYTHING.

And I forgot the wise words that were bestowed on me months ago.

“If you don’t see anything, it’s a MISS, so do SOMETHING. The worst thing you can do is nothing because it’s not going to work out.”

Wiser words have never been said.

At jump #8 I saw nothing, and I reverted to, “It’s OK, I have a fabulous canter, we are in an amazing uphill balance, and since it’s “all about the canter”, I’ll just keep coming & it’ll all be OK.”

Um No.

It wasn’t OK.

And I’m here to say, when you hit a jump on a 1/2 stride there’s this little thing called physics and I don’t care how “good your canter is” the jump is going to be ugly.

And it was.

I am officially throwing down the gauntlet on the side of, “if you want to jump more than 3 feet, or higher than 75% of your horse’s ability………….

you better start seeing your distances.”

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