Crossrails of Doom

The day started out innocently enough,  a quick groom and tack before setting up the arena for Gymnastic Friday.  I set up three trot poles and two cross rails.  One cross rail was set up with the cups at 12 inches, the other one was set with the cups at 14 inches.

I brought Boomer in to lunge him and OMG he was snorting like he had never seen ANY of this before!  So after a few minutes he was fine and we were walking back and forth in hand over both of the crossrails.

I got on and we went WONDERFULLY over the trot poles.  I had them set up along the short side where he has been having trouble with goblins, or whatever, and the poles seemed to focus him and he never varied off of the straight line.  Very happy/proud moment.  Walked over both cross rails, did some loose rein cantering, trotted over the low *snort* crossrail.  Boomer was great.  Trotted towards the high *snort* crossrail... BAM... slammed on the breaks and started snorting like the devil himself was laying in front of us.

Now, he had walked over this 'jump' about 5 times in both directions already.  But damn if he would be trotting over it.  So, we walked over it, and walked over it, and walked over it.  He started trying to leave to the right but would always end up walking over it.  He hit it one with the back legs and OMG it tried to kill him.  I got off, set it back up and hand walked him over it some more.

Got back on, and walked over it a bunch.  The low crossrail was never a problem for him and he continued to trot over it like a champ.  

We ended on a good note with trotting the ground poles some more and walking over the crossrails a few times on a super loose rein.

I feel bad for over facing my poor, poor horse with a 14" crossrail.  I really thought he could handle that. Though I think part of the problem was that I didn't have ground poles leading up to the crossrail.  Perhaps that helped him to even out and accept the 12" crossrail last week.  The crazy part is that I have jumped him outside over brush that had to be at least 2'.  So, I know he can do it.  Oh well, this gymnastic stuff is just for fun, so we will just keep it easy and stick with the little 12" X's!!!

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