Cold and In Control

I had a great lesson last night! But it was freezing cold. 30 degrees F during my lesson. Brrr. All of my extremities felt ready to fall off. 7pm is just too late for a lesson in winter - summer I would be game, but I was just frozen last night.

The topic for the lesson was control. We warmed up doing leg yeilds and walk-canter-walk transitions. There were quite a few people in this lesson, 6 all together which is about the max that the arena can hold. One exercise was to canter a small circle and the girl whose circle was right next to me didn't really get the whole "small-ness" of it, so I had to make Jetta's circle even smaller to avoid collision, lol.

I was pleasantly suprised when Jetta was so good about doing that small circle, she did pin her ears a bit to let me know that she did not like it, but she still did it very well - tight circle, light on the forehand, not too fast either.

Then we jumped. We trotted in, halted, backed up (if they didn't halt nicely) then trotted the next jump. Jetta of course instantly did her best diving impression but a few tweaks to my position really helped. Sitting up over the jump, legs farther forward up near the girth and planning in the air for a halt made a world of difference.

Eventually we put together a course with three lines and two oxers. Jetta did super good. We trotted into the lines and cantered through, counting strides, then trotting again into the next line. Multi-tasking for the win! I was able to do it even counting strides correctly, which has always been difficult for me.

I was so happy to end on a good note and hurry home to defrost!