Sunday lesson (and another try at video)

So Sunday we got another lesson in.  And of course, that one was jumping.

On tacking up the pony, I discovered that Saturday, I somehow managed to shorten my stirrups to jumping length for my dressage lesson.  That might explain a bit...  I knew those suckers felt short.

Anyway, at least it lead me to being able to carry forward the flat lesson to the jump ring!

We learned a very cool thing.  If you turn the pony onto the line and then let go of her face she will carry herself to the fence as long as I keep leg on.  She has learned how to lock on to what I want her to lock on, based on leg.  It's a little thing, but felt A-MAZE-ing!  Who knew we could actually get to the whole directing with leg instead of hand, thing.

For the first time, I was able to feel what stride I needed in a line to get to the next fence.  First couple of times through the first line, I steadied for the 6.  Well, the first time we propped the six, the second time I learned to sit up between the fences to get a nice six.  After that, I discovered the forward 5.  That was pretty thrilling.

I also worked on being able to sit up and steady into the corner and then letting go and riding forward to get the forward stride over the fence coming out of the corner without shooting her at the fence.

I have to continue to work on actually looking up.  I'm doing better looking to the next fence, but I still need to look up over the fence, not at the base of it.

If I biff a fence, I have to be able to forget it and move on, remembering to be more supportive to the next fence to restore her confidence.  Of course, the one we will biff will be the cross rail.

We put together a full course of 9 fences.  The first half was on the left lead, which is Violet's easier.  The second half, which will always be harder for me because everything is moving so damned fast and there is so much to remember, was on the right lead.  At this point, I should just plan on fixing the lead immediately on landing, instead of looking first.  By the time I see that she's on the wrong lead and bring her down, we are past our distance.  See above comment about everything moving too fast.  Mary's brain does not work that fast, apparently.  Anyway, we worked on that, and the second time I did the course, the second half was much better.

Overall very good lessons.  I'm very happy with where we are.  Which is good because next weekend we are making a brief foray to a local HJ series for some jumper classes!  Should be interesting, because there should be people there we know from our former lives as walk-trot crossrail mavens.  I believe we will probably be doing a couple of 2'3" and 2'6" classes.

After that I have been warned that I will be working my way into the cross country field.

So now that the first dressage break is over at Rolex, I should go back to pretending to work while watching, lol.

And just because I want to see if this crap will work...