Breaking It Up

We've been doing a lot of dressage work recently and haven't actually jumped since our last lesson with KO over a month and a half ago!

So I decided we needed to take a break from all of the flat work and do some jumping today.

Jetta was pretty good for not having jumped in so long. I set the jumps low, the tallest was a 2'6" Swedish oxer, then a 2'3" vertical and a 2' cross rail.

Fairly well decimated mini "course" - but you get the idea. We did a figure 8 over it

Jetta was very polite about trotting over the jumps though she still has a tendency to launch herself over at the canter every so often. We just rode in the Myler and she was pretty good about coming back to me when I asked though we did have to throw in a circle every so often to slow down.

I was going to set the jumps up higher but by the time I felt that Jetta was working well enough to go higher she was getting tired. She definitely jumps bigger jumps better, we had the most problems with launching over the two smaller jumps, she tends to not launch over 2'9" to 3' but we need more practice on that before we're ready to show at that height.

Exciting moment - we had a flying lead change!!!! This is so exciting for us because Jetta is the horse that won't change to save her life. She has NEVER done a flying change under saddle. Ok, maybe she has once in recent memory (last jumping lesson). But she just doesn't want to. She will canter all day on that wrong lead even being unbalanced. Recently she's started to do flying changes at liberty which she never used to do either. I'm hoping that this summer we'll work on changes and hopefully get her doing them when I ask.

I need to work on sitting up more and keeping my leg on, but at least I felt like I had a better handle on my release this time, though it's hard to give a release when you're launched out of the tack! I thought I almost came off there once...

Tired pony looking for cookies

Afterwards I turned Jetta out in the paddock outside since it was sunny. Her and Tiki galloped back and forth for a while (with me going please, please, please don't hurt yourself silly horse!) then settled down to graze. She's going to be SO muddy tomorrow but I was planning on giving her a bath on Saturday before the show anyways.

Piglet. Getting nice and muddy...