Jumping Blind

Literally.
It was part of our jumping lesson yesterday. To stay in the two-point over the line, and keep our eyes closed. It was actually a lot of fun, not sure what the point of closing our eyes was, but it was awesome! I think part of it was we were supposed to be working on our position and not trying to correct the horse, but go with what he was doing.

A big thing I need to work on is keeping my lower leg still and back, I usually find myself riding with it to far forward at the girth. Defiantly noticed so big improvements when I had my leg back, he would respond to more subtle ques, not surprising since he could actually feel my leg when the girth isn't in the way. Did some work on transitions, but not the quite as much as we did last Thursday, he still did really well. =)

Had some problems with him being rather terrified of the sun and a bundle of insulation covered with an old blanket. It was one the other side of the railings on the stands, and the way the sun came through the door in the barn was very distracting to him. If it hadn't been so cold I would have got him to spend more time at the end where the insulation is so he could see it and get used to it and calm down. Sadly it was waaay to cold for him to get sweaty, so we had to cut of the home end of the arena for the most part. I hate cutting of ends of the arena and letting him think it's okay to cut them off because he starts to think it's okay.

Hooray! Extra free ride this week, so I get to see him tomorrow, unfortuantly it might be with L, which sucks, because time means nothing to her so she takes forever to do anything. Then, she gets really loud when she's talking and kind of shrill. It gives me a headache and I don't want to be rude, but want to tell her to shut up.

I'm way to lazy to keep referring to people as this friend, that friend, my trainer etc. so this is the "glossary" of their initials.

L-my 'gym buddy', and crazy friend who just moved to the same barn as me in September
N-my original riding buddy
A-my bestest friend
AS-other friend, and only friend who is also into art =)
LW-personal trainer
R-another friend
RM-second personal trainer while LW is on holiday
K-horse trainer, barn owner, coach etc (B.O, I've seen on other horse blogs and am assuming means Barn Owner)
S-friend and a big social nerd, like me =)
KA-another friend, don't see very often anymore, but some drama is starting, so she may show up
SK-sister
AC-crazy aunt, nice, but is a huge know-it-all and diets all the time, setting a terrible example for her daughter
M-one of my three older cousins, went to the Uni I'm going to next year
AK-another aunt with artistic skill I'm beyond jealous of

and that's all I can think of for now.

Transtions

We worked on transitions today, but not a whole lot and we had a lot of long walk breaks since it's so damn cold again.
But it was great! He did AMAZING!! I'm so proud of him, he did brilliant for both the downward and upward transitions. Usually he likes to leap into the canter or rush it from the trot, but he picked it up really well with no rushing and only one big stupid leap. Turns out I've been riding with my leg to far forward which is part of the problem, but once I was riding where it was supposed to be, he was great. The trainer was saying that horses can be nervous if they can't feel your leg and don't know when they are going to be asked to do something. Which I suppose makes sense. The downward transitions, were for the most part much smoother than they have been. Concentrated a lot on what I was doing and that really helped, sitting forward, shoulders back and lifting hands, it seemed to work miracles! Well not miracles, but we had dramatic improvement.

As for the jumping part, we only did smallish jumps, but they were really challenging because I had my stirrups tied with twine to the girth. It was so weird, the most ridiculous sensation ever. It made jumping rather challenging, not sure why, because my feet and legs should have been relatively still and not effected by the twine, but I found it hard to balance after the jump and had to use my hands on his neck to balance.

I don't remember much about the Sunday ride. I meant to write about, but my poor dogs been really sick, so I've been a bit stressed with her, but we gave her pepto-bismol the other day because apparently you can give it to them. So she's done a lot a better these last few days, thank god.

This is me and her last winter sometime.