We had our lesson set for Tuesday at 6:30pm. Unfortunatley along with the first day of summer, we got our first day of 100 degree heat! Ugh. I guess the lessons were pretty consistantly going long since several riders almost passed out, and there were lots of extra breaks added in for both horse and rider. We stood in the shade for a while since the previous lesson was still going on, and probably didn't get on until 6:45. It was still in the upper 90's!
We stuck with the usual plan, I warm up and try her over a few fences that so that both Lola and I can feel happy and confident. Then I push her a little over new thing. Then the trainer gets on to actually push her over the new thing, as in help her to do it correctly and not just well enough to get our butts over it!
We started with the same gymnastic that we ended with last time. It came right back to her no problem, easy and fun. Then we started a line of three fences. This was a little trickier for her. We trotted through the first time...sort of turned into the trot, trot, boing! But she was steady through. Then we trotted in and pushed to keep the canter through. Then we cantered in. This is tricky for us. The second two fences should be easy because the strides are set, the problem is hitting that first fence right! Lola is still learning her comfortable take-off spot and when we haven't set a gymnastic or pole in front of the fence she's got more to figure out. This also can make or break the next two fences! We were a little funky through it. I forgot to ask someone to video, so I'm not sure just what happened. I think she took off from a long spot at the first fence, so of course she made her two strides to the next fence only to find that she was a little long to that fence too, then one stride and, yep, still a long spot to the third. Here's the great thing though. She tends to figure things out pretty quick, if she takes the long spot the first time, she'll try again and end up coming in to close to the fence and brushing, and then the third time she gets somewhere in between. She troubleshoots! I like it. The nice thing is that we can just let her figure it out. I sit quiet and encourage her to stay straight and move forward, but otherwise stay out of her way. She keeps going, and regardless of how funky it feels or ends up, she always tries, and she's always game to come back and try again.
By this point I was feeling like a floppy sack of potatoes up there. I'm pretty sure if she had chosen to stop, duck out or anything like that I would have quickly been mashed potatoes! I think by then I had boiled in my own sweat! So I opted to hand her off to the trainer pretty early on. I did remember to get the video camera then. So the rest I got pictures or video of!
She warmed up over the same gymnastic from the tight turn. Lola was looking pretty good.
She moved on to the line she looked great going this direction, I believe it was her first time through. Of course I started to get confused on my zoom and screwed up the video trying to figure it out! Whoops.
We also bumped the fences up a bit to around 2'3" or 2'6". She was getting tired at this point but still was willing to work her little butt off! I can't post all the videos because of the size, but I've taken some cute still shots from the videos.
009 @ 2
011 @ 7
007 @ 9
Of course with the heat and the work she was dripping with sweat! But the trainer did comment on how quickly she seemed to recover. She was right, it really didn't take much to get her respiration under control.
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