Spencer (Thursday & Saturday)

Spencers' owner asked if I would ride him every once and a while for her, and he's a sweet horse and it would be a good experience, so I said yes.

I rode him once ages ago while she was in Africa and he was great, until we started jumping where he was really choppy and you couldn't tell when he was going to take off, but he has improved loads since then despite not doing a lot of jumping. He did run out twice (or maybe three times I don't remember) on Thursday, the jumps were quite small, but he got over it eventually. He's quite similar to Pony in a lot of ways with how you ride a jump course, so that's kind of fun. Kokanee likes to have his neck when jumping but Spencer would rather have the support and know you're there.
Today he was really good, no running out even at the sun spot on a jump, the only annoying part is that he has an "automatic simple lead change" and it suuuuucks! Rocket does the same thing but it's really smooth but Spencer it's really jarring and unpleasant. He was much smoother over the course once we got going but at first he was a bit backed off because he's not used to being ridden "aggressively" over a course (at least that's what K thinks) , eventually he got over it and did well. Occasionally he takes off really weirdly and you get your but thrown over the back of the saddle and look like this guy.

I also have to figure out who I want to ride/show this summer and right now I'm leaning more towards Rocky over Kokanee.

Also, a story about Pony! So, she was down in Calgary being leased to disabled girl who was jumping her (and everyone who knows Pony was like whaaaat the f?! Pony is crazy!), but apparently it was going but that's started to change. The girls fallen off to many times so now they are cancelling lease. Sadly she's not coming back to me, they think they've found someone else to lease her instead.

Saturday and Uni

The crap winter weather has returned so I missed my ride on Thursday because the high ways were so terrible.
But it cleared up by Saturday so I got some riding in at least.
Kokanee was really good for the most part, he picked up his left lead every time and we had at least 1 successful flying change, which is great. Jumping was not bad, but the jumps are tiny so it's really, really boring. They have been for a while, it's not just because we missed Thursday. Part of it is the two other girls I ride with can't jump that high but still, it would be nice if me and Kokanee at least got to do a bit more. It sometimes feels like we're moving backwards being in a group with them because we do such little jumps and he's come such a long way from October/November that I don't see the point of these tiny jumps when they don't push us to do anything. And this is why every year (except last year because Pony was awesome) I'm stuck showing between 2' and 2'6" (usually 2'3"). Yeah you can really tell that I've been riding/showing/jumping for 8 years. Soooo much progress you can hardly stand it right? It's funny, my one aunt always comments on pictures from horse shows saying things like "oh you're so good" or "that's so high!" and I always just want to say "are you f****** kidding me?". So as you can tell I'm rather bitter about this, but I don't want to/can't move barns right now, and I'm not even sure if I'm going to do any shows other that Ride For Red, if that. Might just go help out if I can, it kind of depend on how this whole find a job situation goes.

But yeah, Saturday, he did well, lots of work on counting strides and getting him deeper into the one corner he always likes to cut. He hasn't done any weird Diesel stopping since he got his teeth and sheath done a few weeks ago, and we've got a new sheep skin pad under his saddle because it doesn't fit quite right (and being a lease horse, getting a new saddle is not a top priority I guess. If I had money, I would attempt to find one) although it never seemed to bug him a whole lot (yet) but he does seem to move a bit better with it.

We get to sign up for uni classes for next year now, no interesting horse related ones this time, which isn't totally bad because the prof was terrible. Thus far I've got Sociology (Canadian Culture), Art History (Pre-Renissance (the Faculty of Arts feels we should be "well rounded" so I get stuck with a load of sickeningly irrelevant and boring classes)), Abnormal Psychology, (there is a Mexican band singing about apples and bananas in this building right now and it's really weird/annoying), Intro Swedish, and a random Women's Studies class.
Winter: Some English class I don't really care about (the Arts faculty being wonderful again), and then four psych class (Social, Lifespan Development, Perception and Principles of Behavior)

Finally A Picture of Kokanee! (and more of Rocky)

Kokanee!

Rocky!

Oxers

We're back to having problems with the left lead, which is incredibly frustrating and my trainer is not a whole lot of help. She really is fantastic most of the time but all she says is "you need to feel when he picks up the wrong lead". WTF am I feeling for?! He's left lead feels terrible and when he's going left on the right lead, it still feels terrible!!

Once we got over that and started jumping he did really well though! Me and Kokanee haven't done oxers together before so that was exciting. The first time over was quite awkward and he really popped over it, but we did the course a couple more times and as he got more comfortable he really improved!

It sounds like he was good in the dressage clinic for J but apparently she likes him now, so she's riding him as well now. I don't like sharing horses. At all. It's great that he's getting all this extra work and I think it will really help him improve but I just hate sharing lease horses. I've had to share them before and during the winter it's fine but it complicates things during show season and K has hinted a couple times it will be Kokanee who I might end up showing not Rocky. I've only had to share Tommy during show season once and the other chick rode dressage so it wasn't a big deal. But both me and this other girl jump so that will cause problems. Possibly, I don't know if she shows, I've never even met her before.

And I really did try to get some pictures of Kokanee but my phone sucks in indoor lighting.

Rocky Pictures

Back in November or October probably, only just figured out how to get them off my phone

Kokanee & Roxy

I had a lesson with Kokanee on Thursday night, that weird bump on his eye looks quite a lot smaller than last week, so that's good. His owners are apparently not worried about it for some reason...

Sooo that's a bit weird..
He was really good for the jumping part of our lesson. We did another grid, this time with four jumps in a row (slowly building up to that of course). It was the first time he's ever done a four jump combination and he did really well, he kept trying to drift out to the right but once I started keeping my left rein open he stayed straighter.

We've had less problems picking up the left lead the past couple weeks, but he did struggle with it on Thursday.
No Saturday ride with him because some other girl is taking him in the dressage clinic, even though he's a terrible dressage horse and she doesn't even like him. Not sure how that pairing was made.

Today I rode Roxy instead and we did the same grid only it was like 2.5 jumps because the last vertical was turned into half a cross pole because she was just not getting what was going on.
She was fine when it was just a single jump and then when it was two but once the third one was up it was just to hard for her. She seemed to be focusing to much on the third before we even got to the second. 
She always tries hard though, so she's not trying to be naughty or anything. She did very well with the leg yielding and lengthening X pattern which is great, she short legs don't do much extending.