Wednesday

I was just looking at the stables website and there's a bit about some of the horses that are for lease and it hasn't been updated in ages! There's horses on there that were sold years ago, like Diesel. Who turns out I lied about in the last post about his height, he was 15.3hh.

I was hoping to find a picture of Rocky to use until I can take one myself but no luck. There was a bit about him under the lease horse section as well: "Rocky. 14.2 hand Morgan gelding. Rocky has show experience in low jumpers,with many wins to his name. He is also the horse I use for ponying horses in
training. This quick and agile gelding has a wonderful jump, but he is very
particular with how he is ridden so needs a quiet rider who will cater to his whims."

Ahh yes, if there's one thing I can do it's whim catering.

So we had a lesson yesterday, there's been some confussion about the lesson times and what starts when and all that stuff, but oh well.

It was tough lesson, not because the course was super hard or Rocky was being an idiot, I was in a lesson with two other people who don't ride at the same level (sorry if this sounds mean and bitchy, I don't mean it too) the one girl is a really good rider but was riding Roxy who is a bit difficult because she's so nervous and she hasn't done a lot of jumping, fine whatever. It was the other girl. She seems really nice which is why it makes me feel a bit bad to complain but she keeps making the same mistakes and not correcting them and then it takes her forever when she's told to do something or correct something and so it gets a bit boring when you have to sit there for ages waiting for your turn while someone keeps screwing up. If it was a different thing each time, that would be different but it wasn't.
Not remembering courses: yeah, everyone forgets sometimes (see last week) and sometimes it's hard to remember the first time you here it. It wasn't a hard course though!
Left lead, circle to yellow, around to white, bend to skinny, long canter, up diagonal, over white, back to skinny.
Not that helps with what the course looks like but that doesn't matter.
This girl went last, after two other people who didn't go of course! It should have been easy to figure out, it was 8 jumps and not a very complicated pattern.

But when me and Rocky finally got to go, he did really well! At the warm up he had refused the white jump, but over the course he was so good. Not at all like last week.
He was a bit more bucky than usual, which was kind of frustrating because I really wasn't using my hands very much at all, but it could have been because we had a super energetic canter and he was just excited to go. It was fun! We got to do higher jumps in the end to and I think he had a bit more fun with and he seemed to respect them a bit more.
Over the last white jump I did get a bit left behind, good thing he has lots of mane so I didn't catch him in the mouth...or face really since there's no bit.

But K did point out that will take some time to find a rhythm with him, especially with all the bucking and the round jumping.