Rough

Well, we got to do our jumping today, but it was just a tad bit rough. It ended up well though.

I set up a gymnastic line with three jumps, which used almost all of the poles that we had! And some of those poles are heavy -  I was certainly already tired after setting everything up!

Of course I forgot to take a picture, but I basically had a 2' jump to trot in to, then one stride to a 2'3" jump and then a bounce to a 2'6" jump. The last jump I put wings on so that Jetta wouldn't duck out and that worked beautifully... what didn't work was our first and second jumps!

The first time through Jetta did well, if a bit unsteady and not very smooth. I went to try it a second time and Jetta wasn't having anything to do with the second jump. She kept swerving, pretty severely, to avoid the second jump and ended up knocking the pole down. I left it down and we went through it a few times with no big problems. I put the pole back up and she kept ducking out to the left on the second jump so I lugged a cavaletti over to block off her escape. She went all the way through it nicely, but when we tried again, this time she refused to go over the first jump. Sigh. Naughty pony.

But eventually I had her going through it very nicely without refusing anything, without knocking anything down and cantering through the line smoothly. Success! We ended by just taking the last fence which I had raised up to 2'9". She takes it so easily, I can't wait until we're solid enough at the lower heights so that we can progress even higher!

We went for a short trail ride. I stopped to snack on some blackberries. I got off because Jetta is such a pain about standing still while I eat, lol. It was so funny though. She buried her nose in the blackberry bush and started eating berries! She'd sniff around for a bunch and then lip along the vine until she found the end, then bite off the cluster of berries at the end. I wish I had my camera, it was too funny and cute. She had lots of purple foam after that. I literally had to drag her away from the bush! She has never done that before and it was the cutest thing ever.



Remnants of the purple foam

 Overall, not a bad ride :)