Video and a Lesson

These two things are completely unrelated, but oh well.

First up, a real video! One that is not video'd by yours truly, therefore you can actually see what's happening (without becoming motion sick). This is the sale video for Tux. I have no video software to edit it and no internet to use to edit it so it's in it's raw form. Also, I persuaded my dad to take it and he was in a hurry so basically I got on and just went for it, so not our best work but at least it gives you an idea.


In other news, we had our first lesson of three with KO that was my one and only horsey Christmas gift. It went wonderfully. I bathed Jetta in the morning and she was being psychotic. I don't think I've ever seen her that hyper and she's been on pasture for a week so I was not expecting it. I was leading her and she was rearing up to her full height then trying to gallop circles around me. I was not amused so I put her in the round pen and watched her gallop full tilt around me just praying she wouldn't kill herself. Finally she decided to be done so I tied her to the trailer and finished grooming her while she danced around. I have never been so frustrated with her, it was ridiculous.

I finally got her in the trailer to the barn for our lesson and she walks off the trailer completely calm and stands patiently while I tacked her up. I lunged her first and she was rather lazy then warmed up in jump tack and she felt lovely, soft and responsive.

When KO got there she told us we were doing flatwork so I went and changed Jetta into dressage tack and she stood untied while I switched everything and we proceeded to have an awesome lesson. I think that may have been the best lesson I've ever had on Jetta, it made me feel like I had an actual trained horse under me!

Started out warming up for quite a while doing a free walk, getting our horses stretching their noses all the way to the ground then doing 15 m circles and getting them stretching and bending. Jetta looooves stretching so she was happy. We practiced walking over ground poles set for a long stride so they still had to really stretch and engage to not hit the poles. We moved up to the trot doing the same thing, really stretching way down. Jetta was in heaven, this was her kind of riding and surprisingly she behaved herself so well. She was darn near perfect if I do say so myself.

The only problem we had was our canter transitions - she kept wanting to come above the bit or pin her ears so we really need to work on that so it looks more "effortless". Our other transitions were perfect though. My favorite exercise was trotting over poles set on a circle, a little harder than it sounds but fun when you got it just right.

Overall I was super proud of Jetta (she sure showed up the other horse in our lesson who is older and has quite a bit of professional training on him!) and it was a great workout for Jetta. Can't wait for some jumping though! We have our next lesson at 6 tonight and then on Saturday it's at 10. Hopefully my mom will come take pics on Saturday. Fingers crossed that Jetta is just as well behaved for today's lesson as she was yesterday's!