Java and Zander

This last Thursday I had an outdoor (finally!) lesson with Java, and she was alright. She seems to be almost leaning on the bit, and I don't remember her doing that before and I'm not all that sure how to get her off of it. The "give and take" thing only goes so far with her and eventually your fingers are so sore from her pulling that it gets a bit difficult. So I'll have to figure something else out. I'd imagine it has a bit to do with one of her lease girls that L doesn't really like that much. This girl uses way to much have hand and not enough leg, so if Java's bracing against that for her, she'd probably do it for all of us. Its a shame L can't really say anything to her about it, she uses her arms to much because she doesn't have enough core or leg strength but how would you point that out to someone?
She was also fairly good for jumping, even got a right to left lead change, which is pretty exciting! We did struggle a bit to get the right lead though, she was hell bent on having her neck bent to the left, so it was really frustrating, but in the end we did get it. The point of the jump course was "to look where you're going" like turn your head in the air to look. There was only 3 jumps to start with and in the end we added a  forth, all verticals, which is nice. Cross rails get a bit boring since they're usually pretty low.

During the warm up each jump had a set of trot poles going perpendicular to them so that we had to get through those to force us to look where we were going and help but not cutting to close and then getting a bad distance. The hardest turn was to get from 3 to 4 so that horse would have a chance to get both eyes on the jump and actually have some depth perception. Java and I only missed it once but never got quite straight to the center and usually jumped at an angle, which as K said is fine, so long as you don't try and turn them in the air, just keep the straight diagonal.

I rode Zander last Saturday (indoors) and he was actually perfect. I don't think he could have done better, which was great since the last time we were together was in January and that was a disaster! Our only problem was a run out in front of the oxer (number 4) but that was my fault for getting a bad turn and chipping in to 3, not pushing forward enough through the four stride and leaning forward a bit a few strides out from 4. Other than that he was amazing. Unlike Java, who gets really head strong, Zander "get's his engine under him" as K says and just goes for it! Despite riding Java a lot more often than him, I've been a bit wary of her and I'm not sure why, but he was much easier to just trust and believe he could and would do it. (i have very little reason to think differently with Java, but there's just been something different since I got back that has made jumping with her a bit less comfortable than it used to be. So that's weird.) He's almost a bit like Pony when he really gets going that makes him a lot of fun.  I was hoping to have ridden him on Thursday but one of the girls who was supposed to be there was going to ride either him or Gody, so I had Java. And work usually prevents me from riding on Saturday mornings, so I'll probably be riding Java until July when the schedule changes and we can riding during the day during the week.

This is Zander's course, it was a make your course lesson. Number 5 was actually a white fan jump, which Zander didn't even blink at, which was excellent! Java doesn't like white poles, so that wouldn't have been so good with her.