Lesson recap: Day 2

Day 2 dawned just as wet and drippy as the first.  After the first lesson, we cleaned up and went to Marcy's house to enjoy some margaritas and rummy.  Then we went back to the barn and did evening feeding and turnout before heading back to the house.

I learned a new thing about Ginny.  I knew she always cooked and it was always fantastic, but I didn't realize that she used to cater on the side as a side business.  It explains a lot.  Of course, Marcy is a fantastic cook as well.  Needless to say, there is always plenty of refueling going on, usually with a little liquid lubrication going on as well.  Saturday night was blackbeans with fish, pineapple/mango salsa and habenero/cilantro slaw over the top.  Yeah, it was good.

What it looked like before we started riding.

So Sunday we were up before the sun to head back for morning feed and get ready for an 8am lesson.  This one was jumping, so I was excited!

Yeah, let's just say Violet was not as enthused.  Or maybe more enthused.  I don't know.

We had poles placed all around the outside of the arena.  We had one each flat rail on each short side.  We had one long wall set up with two poles half raised 45 feet apart.  The other long wall had two fully raised poles 60 feet apart.  We started just trotting over them all until we got over them without issue.  I was to concentrate on keeping upright but going with the motion and not sitting against her.  We finished at the trot and started cantering them, concentrating on being calm and flowing over the poles in both directions.  After we had this figured out, we started to do a random selection of the poles, rather than just one big circle.

Things were looking good, but she would get a little fast by the end of the circle.  A couple of times she tripped herself up, but by the end I was doing better at letting her figure out the stride but supporting her between the poles.  Always concentrating on putting the outside shoulder on the line I wanted.  Also concentrating on allowing her to flow through the corner so I have enough impulsion when I get to a fence (pole, whatever) that I can sit up and help her balance on both back legs to get over the fence.

Then we started the jumping.  We started off over one cross rail.  Then we did one crossrail looping around to the second, stopping after.  At this point, Violet decided she was ready to be done.  Either I wasn't doing something right (totally possible since it was my second lesson and I am in shit shape) or she was just being pissy.  She was like "Time to get off.  Here, let me try to help you with that."  She didn't try real hard, and it didn't work, thankfully.  There was some serious flopping going on on my part as she hopped around tossing her head after the fences.  My goal is always just to ignore that and push on.

This was the exercise, and then we did it backwards.

There was one time that I was supposed to stop after and I let her dribble along at the trot/walk before stopping.  That elicited a well earned holler from Marcy that when I tell her to stop, I have to MEAN IT and MAKE HER STOP.  So we had to practice canter, halt a couple of times.  My stop method was not good in that I was sitting into her and leaning back which is not what we want to do, since the seat is a driving aid. I needed to work on stopping without leaning back.  We got that accomplished.

The fences got raised to verticals, and we continued with some hopping, but not as bad.  The last round we did, after the third fence, she came off on the incorrect lead.  I got thrown all over the place and basically almost came off, so I threw the reins at her and turned before the gate whilst clutching mane for dear life. After she rebalanced and came down to a trot, I picked up the correct lead and then halted.  Marcy said that was exactly what I should have done, in that I forced her to hold herself up.  Going through a short turn on the wrong lead like that felt like crap to me, but basically I told her to cut it out and balance herself or fall the fuck over, I don't care.  In that case, she was forced to balance herself.  Cause no one wants to fall over.

Cheeky little thing

It was a good lesson.  And OMG my left calf is still sore.  Not sure if that's because I was clutching on that side when she tried to get me off, or if it was because I haven't ridden in short stirrups in a while.