Tidbits Tuesday

Sorry for the lack of posting! It's coming up on the end of the term so of course all the last minute mid-terms (yes "MID"-terms) are happening, final projects and preparing for finals is happening.

I do have a very long post in the works about an AWESOME field trip that I took as part of my equine reproduction class that I want to share, but it might take me a while to get it all written out. In the mean time...

Jetta has been pretty good lately! It's been very mild weather-wise so she's been getting turned out again. Though she's started shedding, thankfully she hasn't started cycling again and there's been no pissy-ness in the saddle in recent memory (ok, recent memory for us is like two weeks, but it's a good thing!)

Nomming in the sunshine (and mud)

She has been super unsteady in contact recently, but I think that's more a symptom of us working on getting her to carry herself and she usually settles down by the end of our ride, especially once she gets to canter.

We've been working over cavalettis a lot, both on the lungeline and undersaddle. I really want to strengthen that weaker hip of hers so I think this will help and possibly I can already see a difference! I'll have to take a picture to check for sure, but her hips may no longer be 2" uneven.

Yesterday I jacked up the "cavaletti" and we actually jumped. My goal is to jump once a week but usually I'm too lazy or in a hurry to haul out the jumps, so I need to work on that. We worked on getting our leads over a small (2' to 2'3" ish) jump. That's something I really want to work on this year is getting her to land on the correct lead and working on flying changes. She started out landing on the incorrect lead about 75% of the time, but by the end she had the correct lead almost 100% of the time. Then, just for funsies, I raised the jump up. I didn't have my measuring tape but I think it was between 2'9" and 3'. Anyways, it looked HUGE to me which is sad because I'd hoped that by now this would be our "normal" sized fences that we were working on.

Um, we're jumping this?

But huge or not, Jetta jumped it quite well, save for refusing it the first time (you want me to jump that?!). My release was good, I felt that I sat back enough before the jump, the only problem now to focus on is my leg. I just can't keep it on and in place at the girth! Unfortunately I'll have to wait until next month for a jumping lesson with KO.

There was a small, local tack sale on Sunday. I almost managed to convince myself that I didn't need to go, but my tack whoring side won out. But I managed to purchase only a small amount - a new turnout sheet for Jetta, a purple plaid Pessoa for $30 in great condition. It matches her medium weight turnout which is also a purple plaid and we actually needed this because her other turnout sheet is very poor quality and has been ripped, no waterproofing left and is actually starting to fray.

All purpled out.

Then some Nunn Finer back xc boots that actually fit Jetta.

Aaaaand I got another saddle pad :( I swear I'm addicted to saddle pads. I do not need another one, but this one was really cute - black with hot pink piping and gray binding that for $5 I couldn't pass it up. Someone please convince me that I have enough saddle pads - dressage pads: four white ones and one navy one, all purpose pads: hot pink, light pink, bright blue, black, white, shaped white fleece, xc shaped black, and now a black with pink and gray piping/binding. And recently I was eyeing a gray and turquoise dressage pad in the new Dover catalog. Halp.