Hi, back again. Today I said I would talk about my first event with Punky. I did super well in dressage and he didn’t jump out of the ring this time, and, I came in first after dressage to boot. Then, we went to cross country. Everything was fine until I started going. Punky refused the first fence, which was a stone wall that was no more than two feet high. He refused that jump so I had to turn around and re-present and he refused again. Then, he finally went over. Punky kept up this stellar performance until we came to a bunch of apples in the middle of the course, on the ground. I’m pretty sure Punky was thinking when he saw them,” I see apples. I want apples”. Needless to say, he got his apples. Punky had had lunch today, but he wanted seconds… and thirds. I jerked his head up and kicked him to make sure he kept going forward and not stopping again. The rest of the course was fine except for a few faults here and there. I was going toward the last fence and Punky jumped up in the air, in fact he over jumped, and I wasn’t in the saddle. I landed right on his wither, in front of the pommel. It is hard to tell on Punky where his wither it is. I was quite annoyed. We jumped the fence nearly perfectly, except he over jumped it and where I landed; well, all of you men out there know how uncomfortable that can be. Adding insult to injury; in the stadium, there was a panel painted with apples, which he had so readily eaten in cross country. Well, he refused to jump the apples in stadium. It was a good learning experience. Now, whenever I am walking the course and see apples on the way to a jump, I keep my leg on and keep him looking up.

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