Worst. Luck. Ever.

I had the absolute worst luck EVER yesterday. Geez.

So first of all we went to school cross country. No, I didn't get dumped again. But it was still awful. Ok, maybe it wasn't THAT bad...

#1 - I lunged Jetta over some jumps. Yes, I will always be that "crazy girl" who does weird stuff like that. But it helped. We lunged over all the BN and a lot of N jumps, even a trakhener! She was super good. But, of course, last jump, a large roll top, she jumps over it and canters away and keeps going, and going, and going... The lunge line pops right out of my hand. I was just thinking of how mortified I would be if that happened. And it did. Jetta goes galloping away, lunge line flapping in the breeze. Sigh. She gallops straight through a group of pony clubbers walking out for a lesson, past all of the moms walking up to watch them, past the barn and down the driveway with me running behind. Luckily someone caught her before she ran all the way home. I was absolutely mortified (and about ready to keel over from overheating). Then we had to make the walk of shame all the way back to where I left my stuff in the field, back to the group of pony clubbers. Luckily the trainer didn't make a big deal out of it like some people would have. I have before gotten lectured on the "dangers" of lunging my horse, at least the pony clubbers got a good example of what "not to do" a la crazy me, right? Glad I could be such a wonderful example.

#2 - I had a meeting at 6 pm so I wanted to leave the cross country course by 4:30 pm so I could walk back to my barn (it takes half an hour) and then have time to go home and change (oh the joys of not having a truck and trailer). Buuuuut I lost track of time and before I knew it, it was already 5 pm. Shoot. So I packed up my stuff really fast and off we went, power walking back to the barn. I was carrying a  bag of stuff (water, lunge line, halter, purse, crop, etc.) and my lunge whip (giant purple, over-sized stick). So of course that made me look even more crazy than my previous antics. Halfway home I decided to ditch my stuff in the tall grass on the side of the gravel road so I could use both hands to ride and we could actually trot. I pulled my phone and purse out of the bag and trotted back to the barn. I was planning on coming back to get my stuff with the car. I get back, untack Jetta super fast and put her in the pasture. And go to my car. And I can't find my keys. Guess where they were? Back in the bag I had hidden on the side of the road. &$*@*# The barn owner was not there, my one friend who actually has a car wasn't answering her phone... So I walked. All the way back to where I had left my bag. I took me a good 45 minutes to get all the way out there and back. In the hot sun. In my riding clothes and boots.

So obviously I missed my meeting. I now have three blisters. I am sun burnt because of course I forgot to put sunscreen on. I'm exhausted and I'm pretty sure that everyone thinks I'm crazy. But at least I feel like our little schooling session was worth it, despite my newfound (continued?) status as the crazy lady and the other awful things that happened.

Jetta was pretty good under saddle after her little escape act. I tacked her up and we went and jumped all the BN jumps. We only had one or two refusals and they weren't dirty stops like they had been before. We even jumped a jump that looked suspiciously like the one the she dumped me over, except I think it may have been smaller. Anyways, it was a productive yet awful day all wrapped into one.

So, can anyone top my day in terms of awfulness?

The Plan

Sorry for being so quiet... There's just so much going on right now and I can't tell you how much I want it to be summer right now! I have two and a half weeks left of school so I just need to survive the rest of this term...

Anyways, on top of school and preparing for finals (yuck) I am also trying to ride Jetta a bunch. You might remember that I was having a hard time with school and horse so Jetta was only getting ridden once or twice a week. Needless to say, riding her four or five times a week nearly triples my stress level, but I want to be prepared for the HT in three and a half weeks. Can you believe that I'll only have a week from the time I get out of school till the HT?! That's too soon! I had two weeks last year.

So here is The Plan in preparation for the HT. Today we are going to go school cross country yet again. Poor Jetta will likely be sick of it by the time the actual HT rolls around. But I plan on making it so that the xc jumps are no big deal like they used to be. Since I don't have access to a truck today, we are walking down the road which won't be too bad save for the fact that I am going to lug my lunge line, halter and carrot stick along with me too. I'm sure we'll be an interesting sight.

Then on Saturday we entered a one-day horse trial at the same location. Really nervous about it (I don't want to make a fool of myself and get eliminated on xc) but I just have to think of it as what it really is - a schooling show. I entered Novice but after getting dumped I realized that there's no way Jetta's going to jump the Novice xc jumps so I emailed the secretary and she was super great about moving me down to Beginner Novice. I felt like Intro would be too small, so hopefully I made the right decision. The goal is to increase Jetta's confidence.

Then we have a while until school gets out. Jetta will move home on the 15th or 16th which I'm actually super excited about. I know some people don't like all the work that goes into caring for your horses - feeding, watering, cleaning stalls, etc. but I enjoy having that control over my horses care and I get to walk basically 10 steps out of my house to the barn.

We have entered a clinic on the 19th where we will do a dressage Ride-A-Test for a trainer. Basically we ride the test we'll be doing at the HT and the trainer will give us a score. Then the trainer gives us some pointers in a mini-lesson and then we ride the test again and hopefully improve our score. I've never ridden with this trainer before but it will be nice to get some insight into how our dressage is looking since we never got a chance to go to a dressage show. KO will also be giving jumping/cross country lessons as well. I'm considering asking her to ride Jetta over the course for me since I'm lacking the confidence to give Jetta confidence to jump the scary jumps. Plus, KO has legs and abs of steel so if anyone can make Jetta jump something she doesn't want to it will be her!

Then the 24th through the 26th is the Inavale Horse Trials! I'm super excited but also slightly nervous. I don't care how we place as long as we don't get eliminated so I hope all this stuff that we're doing in advance will help. I almost thought about not entering, but I think I'm still going to. It really is a lot of fun no matter how well we do and I think I'd be disappointed if we didn't do it. The deadline for entries is the 5th so I'm probably going to wait up until that day to send my form in, just in case I decide to back out...

Successful

Yesterday was successful for several reasons: 1) I didn't fall off! 2) Jetta tried really hard and we actually improved in several areas and 3) We actually managed to garner some compliments! So successful all around. Sadly, I did not get anyone to be my paparazzi so no pictures :(

Now successful doesn't mean that everything went well, but I was happy with what we did do. Here's a recap of the day:

Our show jumping lesson was at 11:15 am so we arrived and watched a bit of the lesson before us. Jetta was pretty wired at first, really being heavy in my hands - pretty sure she was solely feeding off my nervousness though. I had entered Novice and got grouped with two Training level riders. Ah! I'm not ready to jump that high! Was what I was thinking. I was super nervous that we'd be pushed too far out of our comfort zone and have another accident like last weekend.

Luckily though, even though the trainer, KH, did push us farther than I would have thought possible for our level, Jetta stepped up to the challenge nicely! While Novice is 2'11" max height, I haven't really jumped that high... mostly at all. We've been doing a lot of 2'9" jumps. Anyways, ended up doing a huge long 3' course. Way to go pony! I was so proud of her, these were some pretty big verticals and oxers, all around 2'11" to 3'0" tall. Of course it wasn't perfect, there was a triple combination that was quite hairy. I told KH that we had trouble with combinations so this was great practice. Jetta repeatedly ran out or refused at fence 2, a little (large) picket fence. But by landing super straight and "staying close to the horse" I was able to get Jetta through the line, a little rough, but we ended up doing it twice. Success! At one point when I was going through the combination KH yelled Sit up! SIT UP! And I did! It's nice to have someone to yell at you :)

And to top it off, we rode our first fence at an angle! She did so good, not even trying to refuse, although you could tell she was a little confused - do I jump it or not? And then riding a bending line to another fence on a diagonal. Such a pro. And we jumped a swedish oxer (love!) and although she took a good hard look at it, she went over. I was so happy with her by the end. It was rough and unpolished, but she tried really hard.

Homework: Sit up! Use the outside rein to turn the shoulder. Land straighter.

Ready to do some xc!

Then we had three hours until cross country. So I took a nap :) Jetta is very well behaved with being tied to the trailer as long as she had hay. What I love about her is that every time I offered her water throughout the day, she'd drink it. Jazz would never drink at a show unless she spent the night, so it makes me feel better when they actually drink!

Cross country came, this time with another trainer, DR. She was the more experienced trainer and obviously very knowledgeable, so I learned a lot. Another proud moment - Jetta jumped down a bank! And we cantered into and through the water! And we jumped down into the water! The only thing that we didn't get to do that I wanted was working on ditches, so that will have to be next time. Otherwise, this first part was awesome! It took quite a bit of convincing to get her to go down the banks, she did not want to. But another rider with an awesome flea-bitten gray pony let us tail her super close so Jetta just followed her off the edge. Once she did it once, she was like Oh! This is actually kind of fun! I can do this!! She was super proud of herself afterwards.

The jumps however, were still not very good. She's still afraid of them :( I wish we had never gone schooling last weekend, because up until that one jump that I fell at, she was doing amazingly. So we schooled the same set of jumps over and over and over again until the roll top wasn't quite as scary.

Homework: Again, sit up! Work on riding softly and forward to the jumps. Collect six strides out, then ride forward the last three strides with giving hands.

Overall, I was very pleased with Jetta. She worked hard and I'm so excited about doing the banks and also about how awesome our show jumping was. Can't wait to enter a jumper show :)

Free Jumping Beast

Jetta was so good for our ride last night! I started out by free lunging her. First she jumped 3'3" a couple times, then I added some jump blocks until it was about 3'9". She was so good! It was pretty cute - after jumping it she'd trot around a bit with her tail in the air and snorting and prancing like she was all that and she knew it. Then she'd trot over to me and stop, heaving a big sigh - "Did I do good mom??" Adorable.

After that we just had a quick ride. I did lots of two point (getting better!) and I set the jumps down small, roughly 2'3" or somewhere around there and jumped them only a couple times in each direction. Jetta was very good, and although she was a bit too excited to jump, she still listened well and payed attention to all my half halts. I mostly got to work on my position, because at that height Jetta doesn't need hardly any direction from me. Of course once I finally got the "sit up!" part through my head, my heels would then come up. Annoying. I think I finally nailed it on our last jump - sitting up, shoulders back, nice release, leg on, heels down. Too much at once!

I'm excited to have someone to yell at me about what I need to fix over fences this weekend and am trying to find someone to video/photograph... My mom won't come because she doesn't like watching me jump and ML doesn't really want to do it, so we'll see. It's great when you have someone to tell you what you need to work on, but it helps it sink in even more when you can see what you're doing wrong yourself on film.

 I got some of our free-jumps on my cell phone, beware that it's really, really dark but it's proof!

Lawn Darts

What's one way to cheer yourself up after your horse decides to turn xc schooling into a game of lawn darts? Watch other people who have also proved their lawn dart-worthiness :)

Thanks to Horse Nation I can do just that with their Oh $h!t: Your most humiliating moments, captured on film weekly post.

I imagine I looked just like this, insert a jump behind the horse's front legs and voila! That's me.

Or maybe I looked more like this... I guess I'm just glad I didn't fall off in the water!

And the grand finale....




Haha, there's just something great about watching other people eat dirt after you just had the same experience...

I finally rode Jetta today. She was pretty good, though I think still a little bit sore from our cross country experience over the weekend. We just rode in dressage tack and she was just a little bit stiff, especially in her back, she wasn't as willing to swing and engage over her back thus our trot was a little bit quick and choppy, so we worked on our transitions, did lots of long and low work and some 3-loop serpentines across the arena to help stretch and get a little more supple.

We got our schedule for the eventing clinic this Saturday. I entered as a Novice pair, but I'm slightly worried about that. I guess it's just a lesson, but my lesson group is made up of half Novice riders and half Training level riders. I really hope that they don't want us to attempt some of the training stuff - show jumping yes, but not cross country!

I was thinking about some of the training jumps that were on the cross country course that we did over the weekend, and of course the ones that scare me most - the trakehner and the corner. For some reason, I just really, really don't like corners. They just seem like way too easy to have a run out on and whenever I watch upper level eventing, it always seems like I see a fall at a corner. The trakhener - I'm not really afraid of them like a lot of people I know, I just don't think Jetta's ready to attempt one, especially since my fall. I'd be happy for the trainers to get on and jump her over a trakhener, but I certainly don't plan on doing one anytime soon! I remember looking at the trakehner when we were jumping and thinking - "Oh, that's not very big, I bet we could do that" but once we got closer my thinking was more "Holy cow that thing's scary! Nope, not for us today!".

Hopefully we're not asked to do anything that far out of our comfort zone this weekend and I get some good pointers!

Tomorrow I'm planning on riding and again on Friday. I plan on doing some small jumps tomorrow and then an easy ride on Friday - probably some dressage or maybe a trail ride. Hopefully I get to give her a quick bath as well so my mud-loving pony doesn't look quite so gross - the rain has unfortunately made a reappearance much to Jetta's joy and my chagrin. I just want it to be summer. At least this weekend is 3 days long!

I think Jetta should be a bridle model :) Such a pretty face!

Spa Day

No ride today, though luckily it's not because I'm still sore, lol. I feel almost completely back to normal after the crazy weekend.

Instead, I just lunged Jetta, cleaned some tack and she got her toes trimmed and mane pulled. Horses must think we are the weirdest creatures ever to call something like that a "spa" day when "torture" might be a better description. Poor Jetta's mane just did not want me to pull it today, even trying to get the smallest clumps of hair out was difficult and Jetta was not pleased with me. It looks much better now, although it keeps trying to switch sides and since I won't let it, it has contented itself with sticking straight up.

Jetta's punk mane. I think she likes it, her baby name was Punky after all ;)

Jetta got two small scrapes on the back of both of her knees from climbing off the jump on Saturday. The scrape on her right leg is a little swollen and tender so I put some more wound salve on it. She didn't seem off at all on the lunge line, but my trimmer AC thought she was off at the walk. At first she thought she was still off from the abscess since she wasn't weighting her heel as much on that RF, but when I showed her the scrape she thought that it explained it. Silly horse, that's what you get for pulling stupid stunts like that!

It has started raining again :( I thought for sure that summer had arrived a bit early, but it's chilly, windy and very, very damp out. I don't think Jetta minds at least - she was just happy hanging out with her giant manger full of hay!

What do you want?

Noms - Jetta at her happiest