Jumper Mode

Jetta was so good for our jumping lessons! I was very proud of her.

On Friday we did grid work. It was great because I haven't done a lot of grid work with Jetta and she did really well with it. It was nice to just be able to basically sit there and have her figure out the line. And it was quite the line! A vertical with two strides to three bounces then two strides to another three bounces and then two strides to a final oxer. Very happy that she didn't try to refuse at all though the last oxer had a scary panel so it required quite a bit of leg. The new bit worked out SO WELL. It was amazing. I didn't have to deal with Jetta pulling my arms out of their sockets and she wasn't out of control. KO even commented that she was being really good.

We did such a fun exercise that was to go through the line and then turn left or right depending on the lead you landed  on, then go over a skinny roll top and do a tight rollback towards the wall and then come around to the other side of the line and do the other skinny roll top and another tight roll back. Jetta was much better about turning to the left but it's something we really need to work on - turning from the outside aids.

Jetta was awesome because she was in the jumping mode - a couple times I tried to circle before the first jump and she'd "lock" onto the jump and try to take it sideways, lol.

On Saturday we did course work and it wasn't quite as wonderful as the day before because *I* had to actually do something rather than just sit there. I've got a lot of work to do... Jetta was quite good, she only refused a fence twice which is a huge improvement. KO had me work on giving a good release over the jump because I still don't trust her very much so I tend to not give her a generous enough release so I ended up catching her in the mouth. Bad, bad, bad. It was fun though, but I hurt my back unfortunately so I've been hobbling around all day today. All the horses get the week off because I'm off to Vancouver, BC for a couple days with friends! And then it's back to school...