Jumping Around

I got a lesson today! Finally! ML and I went over to a barn down the street (ok, it was about 15 minutes away) and had a lesson with BP.

I was pretty nervous because I haven't had a jumping lesson in forever and I didn't want Jetta to be an idiot.

I had three goals today: 1) Show that I am actually a competent rider, despite how my horse sometimes acts otherwise, 2) not have Jetta act up too terribly, and 3) actually get something to take home with me to help improve my riding at home.

I rode Jetta for quite a while last night. She didn't get ridden on Saturday or Sunday so she was pretty dang hyper. I'm still a little put out that I didn't ride in the show, it would have been a perfect day/place to show :( Anyways, it was an interesting ride. Jetta was quite explosive but we still got some good work done. I've been doing lots of leg yeilds and shoulders in to help acclimate her to my leg and not get these touchy canter transitions. Ugh. Anyways, our canter, while not as good as it was a few weeks ago, is slowly coming back up to normal. I have to have the perfect balance of just enough leg on her to keep her round, but not let her take off galloping. Mares...

Since I rode her so hard last night, I hoped she was going to be good for the lesson. I lunged her a lot beforehand to get some energy out. We found the barn fine, luckily, since the last time ML and I went someplace we didn't know we ended up getting insanely lost. The barn was very interesting. We were thinking about possibly getting on the waiting list to board there next year, but I don't know. There's two parts to the barn, so everything is divided in half. There's the arabian side and the sporthorse side. BP is buying out the arabian side, so I wonder if all the arabian boarders will stay there. Anyways, the arena is even divided in half. There's a half-wall running across the center of the arena. If there wasn't a wall, then the arena would be a pretty good size, but divided in half it's tiny. There's several medium sized paddocks, but I don't think they use them in the winter. There are a lot of horses there and many college-age and younger girls. ML made the comment, "I'm not sure I want to go through that again, so much drama!" Which is definitely true in most cases :) But one thing I really liked was that they have grooming stalls! I hate having to ask 3 people to unclip the cross ties and move over so that I can get to the arena. Might sound silly, but I want them, haha.

Ok, so the lesson. We warmed up on the flat and she had us do some interesting exercises, leg yields down the wall, shortening and lengthening their stride and counter-bending and using the outside leg to ask the shoulder to move over. She said this was to teach the horses to use their whole body and get their hind end working under themself. Then we started the real work, starting with ground poles, then X's and then verticals. Jetta was a brat and kept trying to rush and kept running out on the second fence, grr. Eventually she was doing better, but geez, what a workout! I'm going to be a little sore tomorrow. Now I know that I really need to step up my game on teaching her to respond better to half-halts. I think I'd like to go back and take some more lessons, but we'll see. At least I finally achieved my goal of taking a jumping lesson!