(Kinda) Back to Work

After our last show, Jetta has been kinda great. I was pretty frustrated with our rides at the show since I know we are both capable of so much better. My ride after the show we even ran through a test in full (which I never do) to see if there was any bracing happening like it happened at the show... There was none, she was soft and compliant the whole test.

This is definitely not a new problem. One of the last dressage shows we went to before Jetta got pregnant she was AWFUL - I felt like our whole test was basically a barely controlled bolt, she was running through and ignoring my aids. I walked out of the ring knowing we deserved a 50-something % and a low placing... then we miraculously pulled off a mid-60 score landing us in 2nd place. So obviously her being a freight train doesn't look as bad as it feels, but we're never going to be able to progress in our training if we don't get it under control.

But her neck is starting to muscle nicely!

Overall though, I feel like I finally have my pre-baby horse back, the one who is ready to school second level and everything. She's by no means perfect at home, but we're definitely improving. She's getting steadier in the contact, her trot feels really nice most of the time, and our canter-trot downward transition is kinda there. Two things we're struggling with right now, oddly enough, is our stretchy trot - Jetta is willing to stretch down, but kinda takes off - and our right bend disappeared. Not sure where it went, but I think it's a me thing, that I'm hanging on my outside rein too much, so we've been working on that. Our lengthened canter to working canter transition is still very resistant, so we're still playing with that a lot while trying to not let her get used to a big fast canter all of the time.

I haven't ridden her in the verbindend bit in a long time - I thought it might be our magic bit when I first bought it, but over time it was just a little too much bit for schooling at home. I put it aside to use possibly just at shows and then forgot about it. I pulled it back out again for the first time in forever and tried a ride in it and I'm not sure it was any better than the Myler. I think I need at least one more ride in it to decide if it's going to be a useful bit just to use in a show environment, so fingers crossed!

I'm trying to figure out how to budget some more shows into our schedule, but it's really hard since I'm not working right now and of course it's tough to schedule around 4th year rotations, but I'm hoping there'll be at least a couple shows in the books for us! Of course, I'm really wanting to ride lots right now since it seems we're on the upward swing in our training at the moment, but my rotation at the humane society is almost 2 hours away from home so I've been staying in the dorms which is a huge bummer. I miss my ponies, but I at least get to see them on the weekends!

Also, I went on this hike and it was amazing