Morning!

Wow, I actually got up early this morning! Now, for some perspective, I never get up early unless I absolutely have to. I am the typical teenager who likes to sleep a lot. This morning, however, I was convinced by my barn buddy, CL, to get up and go out to the barn at 7:30am.

I actually got myself up, though I must say it was very difficult and I was sooo tired. CL bought me coffee which was a bonus :) I have to admit that I really liked getting up early. No one was at the barn, Jetta was fantastic so it was a nice way to start the day and now I'm AWAKE!

Today we did canter poles and some jumping. I set out three poles to canter over and Jetta did super well. I have been working a lot on my position and I have to say that I feel like I'm really improving. Lots of two point and working on getting those heels down and a nice crest release over the jump with eyes up and shoulders back.

Then I raised the last pole to a large X and trotted her through a couple times then cantered in each direction. She's still a little quick in one direction, but it's improving. I then set up the last two jumps in our quick direction and just trotted her up and cantered her through the one bounce stride. The last fence was a vertical at 2' but she didn't get her feet up fast enough after the bounce so I ended up lowering it to about 18" and she did much better. I only did it once without knocking it down because I think she was getting a little tired and I wanted to end on a good note.

I think next time we jump I'll set up a couple fences on a circle so we can work on our quick direction. It's not like it's worse going to the right or left, just heading towards one end of the barn. Weird. It was a very nice workout though. Perfect way to start the day!

I forgot to talk about my bareback session earlier in the week. Never. Again. I rode bareback just cause I was too lazy to actually put a saddle on and work so I just hopped on sans tack. I worked on using very light aids and then we did a lot of trot work, asking Jetta to slow down so I didn't bounce around like a jackhammer. We did some shoulders-in and circles. It was a very nice ride. But then came the next day. I was so sore. Jetta's shark fin withers and bony back did not make it a comfortable ride. I could barely walk let alone sit. It was torture. It took about three or four days for the pain to subside. Remind me to never, ever ride without a bareback pad. Gosh that was terrible. I'm sure Jetta didn't appreciate my bony butt any more that I appreciated her bony back but I will never ever do that again.

I do plan on riding at least once or twice a month bareback (with a pad) because then I can really fine tune my aids and exercise my core muscles.

Here's some cute pictures from last week:

Treat? Pretty please? Notice the funny braided forelock.
Got tired of it getting all tangled up when I bridle her.

Kind of a conformation shot. I want to work on my braiding
skills and then take a good picture of her "naked" as a conformation shot.

Katy: "Gimme the tweat NOW, nom, nom, nom"

In other news I finally sold my dressage saddle. Win! I don't know how long I've had that thing for sale but it's been forever. Yay! I now only have 4 saddles (wince, well one is for sale so don't judge me :). Once I get that sold I'll have a dressage saddle, a jumping saddle and a training saddle (aka if the horse rolls with it on I don't really care). There's a local tack sale in a couple weeks put on by the dressage chapter so I'm consigning my tack to that, hopefully it will get sold or at least get some more people interested in trying stuff out.

I've been getting my eventing fix over at eventing nation. I really enjoyed watching Phillip Dutton's winning dressage test, I felt it was very nice and smooth. I watched a couple others and it just wasn't as smooth or soft and a several people I watched had very downhill rides with heavy hands. Not very pretty. There was also this article that I read that was very nice. I like how William Fox-Pitt talks about his training style and how he rides. Seems like a great guy, very common sense like.