Jousting (because nobody really cares about anything else we've been doing)

We had our usual Sunday jousting practice, and again we took Saga and Reddums. I went along this time, although I ended up not riding much.

Once again, Saga did really well. He is improving every time we work with him, which is fantastic! The hubby was able to put on his helm in the saddle without any drama on Saga's part, although me standing there feeding treats may have helped.

 

Saga contemplates the hubby's helm.

Two weeks ago, the simple act of hubby holding his helm while in the saddle was too much for Saga. This weekend, it was no big deal.

 

Putting helm on and adjusting the chain mail aventail - not a problem. Yay, progress!

 

As promised, a few armor pics. Here's the hubby's helm with the attached chain mail aventail.

 

The chain mail is literally sewn to a leather strip that runs around the edge of the helm. This attachment method is the same as what is used on the Lyle Bacinet, which this helm is based on. 

 

And a close-up of the chain mail. If you look closely, you'll see that each individual link is connected to four others, which is called a "four-in-one" pattern. Each link is also individually riveted shut - by hand! This is stronger than just welding it shut. 

As usual, they started out just walking around and working at the quintain. The quintain was used in medieval times as a training device for the joust. It's a shield set on a spinning crossbeam with a counterweight on the other end, often a sandbag. The goal is to hit the shield but be going fast enough so that the sandbag doesn't spin around and hit you (something I've never seen happen, btw).

This image is from a 13th century illuminated manuscript, showing a knight tilting at a quintain. So yeah, we're doing exactly what they did 700 years ago!

I managed to get some video at the beginning of the session, so hopefully this gives some idea of what we're doing. Mostly at this point it's being repetitive if the horse gets too amped up, and desensitizing Saga to the sounds.

After I stopped taping, the hubby started working on more runs with the lance. Saga was having some trouble staying on the lane going one direction, and was actually going sort of sideways. We finally figured out that my hubby was trying to neck-rein him over closer to the lane, which was causing him to twist his head and body. When the hubby focused on his hand in the middle of Saga's neck, he didn't have any issues with straightness.

 

Here's what the lane looks like as you're about to start your run. The center divider (which is solid in an actual joust) is the tall rope on the left, and the shorter rope held up by the white posts on the right is the counter-lane. Having a counter-lane helps the horses run straight with minimal rider direction. You can see that there's no counter-lane on the other side of the center divider, and that was the side Saga was having trouble on.

Although I didn't catch it on video, by the end of the day they were making measuring passes at the canter. Next weekend we are going to try to do some passes with foam-tipped lances, so hopefully that will go well!