Jetta Jumps!

I don't know why I love this picture so much, but I really do!

I actually got to jump Jetta for the first time in forever! My friend at the barn who owns Dundee told me that she was going to set up some gymnastics if I wanted to join and I couldn't pass that offer up! I was pretty worried that Jetta would be awful, but I figured we couldn't go wrong with some gymnastics. Of course when I got to the barn it was super busy and in addition to not being able to find my lunge line, all the lunging areas were taken.

Jetta warmed up extremely spooky. Not that I could really blame her though. There was a horse being worked with on opening a gate so the gate was clanging, the horse was dancing around whinnying for it's buddy who was just outside the gate and the owner yelling at the horse. Then there was the horses being brought inside, the little kids running down the aisle... So I couldn't really blame Jetta a whole lot.  

Warming up I just focused on doing a lot of half halts and if she didn't do them, then we'd halt and back up before going back to whatever gait we were in. This helped tremendously. I was worried she would try to refuse the jumps since we haven't jumped in like... a year or two? But she was game. We just needed to work on not rushing the jumps. Originally we started out with two trot poles to two tiny little fences, then just gradually kept bumping things up. 

After halting Jetta a couple times in front of the trot poles I finally got her to listen to my half halts in front of the line of jumps so she didn't rush... but we still had to deal with her rushing after the jumps. 

Knees

I feel like I'm learning how to ride all over again almost! Misty was so different - it was all about riding Misty forward, forward, forward where as with Jetta is a balancing act in getting her to not rush and not be on her forehand. 

That hind end though

Finally once Jetta took off bucking after the last fence (once it got raised way up - Jetta was so proud of herself for clearing it) I told MS's roommate who was graciously helping us, to yell at me to sit up before I went over the last jump. That helped immensely. I just kinda want to curl in the fetal position and let Jetta take me over the jumps, but that's not really going to work. I needed to sit up and give her a strong half-halt before that last jump so she wouldn't take off. After going through the line cleanly without taking off, I called it quits. That last jump looked HUGE to me, even though it probably wasn't all that big. I'm hoping it was 3' but now that I look at the videos it really just looks like it was barely 2'9". Oh well. I was proud of the monster pony!

I really need to work on my leg position, I probably should shorten my stirrups a bit to help with that! 

Videos got in a weird order. The 1st and last are of the smaller jump, the 2nd and 3rd are the large jump, with the 2nd video being the one she took off bucking over, and the 3rd is the one she jumped well and we called it quits on.