Thursday 23 August 2012

Jumping lesson

Our jumping lesson went really well last night - I was pleasantly surprised as it was a bit of last minute decision to take L up on her offer based off Kika's & my good session on Tuesday evening. I figured we could both do with a reward and a change of scenery - nothing like a couple poles to make everything interesting again.
We warmed up over a pole then cross pole type of bounce combination on each rein. Then cross pole became a straight bar on each rein. I was encouraged to canter on after fence and then a vertical was added to the mix. A couple pops over them and we continued cantering through a triple combination of a bounce in and one stride out over an oxer. I got that woefully wrong first time and was told to shorten up my reins after each fence and as a result to be better able control my pace coming into the take offs. Came around again and did it much better - final fence added to the mix was another straightforward oxer up the longside of the arena changing rein after the triple combination - again reins were a bit long and we kind of fluffed the first attempt - but got ourselves organised when we did the course again the second time. L was laughing at me cos as she was shouting "brake" at me to slow down before the fences - she said she could hear me clicking at the mare! I wasn't even conscious of making a sound!

Changed things up a bit when she made the first pole & straight bar into a pole followed by two straight bars in a bounce left handed turn down over vertical, up over longside oxer then back to trot to come at the pole & bounce off the other rein and turning right handed cantering through the triple combination. Took me a couple of times to get that course right as it was quite twisty and I forgot where I was going a couple of times - which resulted in a big boo-boo of a woeful jump from me where I deservedly got yelled at for not presenting properly to the fence - bless Kika she was an angel and got me out of trouble by jumping despite my terrible steering!
Came around again and got it right the second time and finished on a good note - feeling apprehensive and guilty for having made a boo-boo.
Kind of took the buzz out of me as I knew it was all my own doing - but am still immensely proud of the horse and her responses to me - when i had my reins at a manageable length she came back to me well and overall we jumped much better than in our previous lesson a few weeks back. Namely that Kika was actually jumping this time and not just flopping over the fences - admittedly L had increased the height from our previous lesson - correctly recognising that Kika was being disrespectful of the lower heights.

So that was my evening, plan is to lunge tonight as she's been ridden the last three days and that'll give me time to come up with interesting things to do over the weekend as I've tomorrow off - so three whole days to do with as i please!

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