Pie Lafferty: Hi! I am Pie Lafferty and this is a Show Jumping demonstration. We're going to show you a little bit about riding in a course today. But, before I start, I would like to speak to you just a moment, about position. Your lower leg, sets straight down under your knee and this is called your base, your knee to your hip. So, it supports your base, your base supports your back and then your arms set slightly by your side. Now, I am in a full seat position right now, but when I start to jump, I am going to shift up into a light seat and this is how we jump to the fence. We ride in a ride in a lighter seat, where we can come to the saddle if we need to or lighten up if we need to. That is your basic jumper position.

So, it's time now to start and we need a warm-up fence, because all horses need a warm-up fence. I should insert here that at a horse show, you have a pattern and diagram that you must jump in the order that it is written in and it will be on a piece of paper outside of the gate and you have at least thirty minutes to study it before they give you the course walk. Okay, so we're going to start now. This horse has been standing, so I am going to walk a few steps, pick up the posting trot and just; out of interest for you, your hand stay quiet, still, independent of the rest of your body by allowing the elbow joint to be free and oily, elastic.

So, we are going to trot these elevated rails, that teaches the horse a little bit about how to use his body for jumping and here we go. One, two, three, very nice. I am going to come around here, do a transition to the walk. Pick up the canter. Pick up the canter, now, we'll jump that little gate for a warm up. Well, that's about twelve foot step and he thought a little and there it worked out. Sometimes, it's not exactly what you want. You just go with what you've got. Might well catch this oxer. Never mind watch the step.

Now, we're going to try this one on the outside. I want to tell you, if you don't have a good stride for your turn, you may have difficulty making your fence, he needs to agree for me to rush him, so, I am not going to do that. So, we are going to try this. Lands on the wrong lead. we are just going to pull him up. Pick up the canter. We'll work on that, again lands on the wrong lead. I think what we will do is we will come down off the right lead. Since, we are already here, we're going to do the balance to the wall and find if I can. Okay so take the canter. Okay, alright here, good job.

That was a good effort on the horse part. He jumped well, he steadied well. Good job! Good job! He doesn't know very much. So, you even the see the confidence starting in him. So, a little bit about the judging penalties in this jumper division, knock downs are penalized, refusals are penalized, you are eliminated after two stops and also time is an element. You will have a time limit on the first round and if you go over, you'll get time penalties. Normally, in this lower competition, you'll have a timed jump off in the case of equal faults. The Olympics run is just a little bit different than under table A and they do a time allot which believe me is going to be very, very difficult. The person with the cleanest round or in other words, the least amount of faults wins the competition. In the next segment, we are going to talk about what it takes to get to the higher level of competition.