Beautiful Weather

Had a lesson last Thursday night...Jessica set up four jumps about 2'3" high on the inside track of the arena so there was a combination that was a "good four strides, or a long three strides" on one side, and a plain old five stride on the other. It was pretty much old hat for Kieran, but we worked on, after trotting into everything, cantering in, through, and out. I had to count strides and think about my position. Kieran did a lot of the rest. ;)

Yesterday, we went on a nice hour-long trail ride, mostly walking, but I figure we covered about 4 miles or so. I really wish I had some kind of gps thing so I could get a good idea of how far we actually travel when we go out. I may have to look into that.

Today we had another lesson...similar setup to Thursday, except Jessica added in two more jumps (18") in the middle that were on diagonals (he usually doesn't really respect the jumps we do using jump blocks now, but he actually cantered nicely out of them each time today).

Anyway, the setup looked something like this:

The red line just shows an example of the order we took them. We did it from several different directions and combinations.

Kieran was actually a champ the whole time. His issue is getting strong to the fences and so I really have to think about sitting up straight and deep and telling him to wait...without telling him to wait too hard or then we lose impulsion, LOL. I've been thinking a lot about pushing my hands forward and folding my body instead of just sort of throwing myself up forward out of the saddle entirely and I think it's working...slowly. I do think my leg has improved tons lately, though I still need to really work on using my calf more instead of balancing mostly off my feet.

Anyway, here's a couple of screencaps and some video below that.

Cantering the whole course. Included the bit at the beginning for the turn on the haunches (we've been working on it, he actually mostly pivoted on the one hind leg this time ) and the discussion about things being _my_ idea and not his and that's why we had to do the big circle.


Jessica is all like "perfect!" but we come in wonky and stuff so what's that about? Well...apparently _I_ was getting backed of that first fence and it was communicated to Kieran so we didn't come in very well _but_ I was still able to push him through it. In the past, if that had happened, he might have actually tried to duck out to the side of the second fence or I would've been like "agh this isn't working whoa!". So there's the improvement.


This was actually one of our first times over them so I guess technically it ought to have been first. :)

And the "beautiful weather" comment on the title was just that it's simply been gorgeous lately and I'm trying to take as much advantage of it as I can...though I think tomorrow will be bath and tack cleaning day and not so much a riding day.