More jumping, more lesson, more RAIN?!?!?!

Wow, a whole week since last update...

Well Monday she got her feet trimmed, as usual she was a perfect angel compared to my four year old gelding!

Tuesday we had our dressage lesson. which was more work than that either of us have had to do before! The trainer had us just going for a half hour solid of hard work without much of a breather! He trot is getting great, very easy to push out or collect back, and she's really getting into the long stretchy trot that we do at the end! We worked on pushing her hind leg underneath her more, especially to the right, to pick up her right lead correctly. Tough stuff! She had to mover her haunches towards the outside, but she really got the idea. Lateral work has always come pretty easy to her.

Thursday we had a continuation of our jumping gymnastics. Some were the same some were different. I also popped her over a cross rail a couple times on the lunge line since we haven't free jumped for awhile and I think that's important for keeping her confidence growing.



And then a little bigger to see how she's doing.



We started out nice and quiet, working on basic trot poles to small cross bars.


You can tell she's just a bit wiggly still on the approach, but once we get in straight she keeps going.


Our very first little course. You can see by the third jump she is starting to get a little fussy. She was listening pretty well though.


We had to change up the course every so often to keep her from anticipating too much, then started to mix the trot poles in to steady her back to her happy little self.


You can see by the end she started to get a little fussy and pop her head up and be resistant a bit. We had been working for a really long time, so we were both pooped.


So we went back to just plain trotting, she was up and down and all around. So I went back to the basic of just asking her to hold herself together at a good trot. She got antsy whenever we passed the jumps... silly girl. So we will just be working at this level until she can keep her cool and her rhythm going through little courses like this. No big deal, no change in pace, or attitude.


As for the weather... I've never seen this much rain in California in May! Crazy! Weird rain and cold weather, plus my busy schedule meant we weren't up to much this weekend. She got some well deserved time off, and we're back at it this week!