Jumping lesson

So Sunday dawned hot.  Surprise.  The high was officially 97, but I tell you, you hit the white sand of a ring, and it's about 10 degrees hotter than that.  Violet was not too excited about being removed from her fan.

We headed out to the ring, where we warmed up lightly, counting the rhythm of her strides in all the gates, bending in and out.  Funny thing about hot horses.  They tend to be hot and cheeky when it's cool outside, and turn into deadheads when it's hot.  She was pretty lackadaisical on the flat.  And she was not happy with the footing, which was a bit hard after some rain that dried up.

Then we got right to it, starting on a grid with cross rails.  Three fences, 3 stride to a 4 stride.  She needed pretty good support to the first fence, as she wanted to slow down to that one, but once in the line, she carried me right through.  I worked on keeping my eye up.  After a few times, the last fence went up to an oxer.

After this, the middle fence was put up to a vertical, and then the first was put up to an oxer.  The technicality here was in my ride.  Violet was still sticky to the first fence, so I had to send her over that oxer and try to keep from breaking my position open as early as usual and then ride to the vertical, where I could break earlier to steady for the final oxer, where I could hold position a bit longer and then get the balanced canter after the fence.  It was tricky, but pony was game.

After that, we went on to working on some lines.  The first was an oxer to oxer line in six strides. Then a right turn to a left bending vertical to vertical line.

We had a little difficulty with this.  The oxer to oxer line rode pretty well, and Violet is getting really good at getting her simple changes.  The issue was with the bending line.  I was not getting back into position and getting her organized early enough, nor riding out far enough in the turn, and it made the out sticky.  Not bad.  She didn't really chip, but it wasn't fluid.

Then we tried to put it all together.

Yeah, that didn't get better.  So we went back and did just the two lines one more time.

This time I got the forward stride, and had the balance in front of me to the last fence.  On that, we called it a day.  We were working on technicality, not endurance, what with it being so damned hot.  Lesson time was little more than 30 minutes, but well worth it.

Thanks to Ginny for being videographer extra-ordinaire.

This weekend we head to somewhere that I have never been to cross country school; the Forida Horse Park.  Should be interesting, as I'm just getting comfortable jumping the jumps in our own field.  And again it is supposed to be hot, so we are rolling out of the barn at 7am to be done by noon.