Spiralling

I wasn't planning on riding in a jumping lesson this week.  I had dressage on Monday with Fancy Dressage Trainer L (fDTL), and Sherlock got adjusted by the chiropractor on Tuesday, so he was out for Tuesday and Wednesday as well, as it was his first adjustment ever and she likes them to have extra time off.  I have literally zero time for life on Thursdays, and I figured that if Friday was the only day that I could ride, we would benefit more from dressage practice than we would from jumping practice.

Not quite a dressage pony just yet.

Dressage, by the way, went really well.  fDTL says that if Sherlock would just accept the contact a little more, he'd be a nice little dressage horse.  Unfortunately, the lifestyle of the lesson horse for all age/experience levels tends to lead to lack of engagement with the bit.  But we ended up improving some over the course of the lesson, so that was good.

Today I had planned  to do a 'free ride' - get on and dressage and try to not talk to my horse so much.  Then 3/5 riders dropped out of the 4:15 lesson, and I hemmed and hawed and talked to Trainer K and decided that I would hop in on the lesson and practice dressage tomorrow.  And lucky you guys, I drew some pretty sweet pictures to explain the exercise that we worked on.

looks way too easy.

I am not entirely sure ~what~ to call the exercise from today.  Offset line?  Spirals?  Ridiculous Rollbacks?  Taking name applications now.

complete exercise.  not to scale.

So.  The verticals were set to be 2 strides apart.  We were working on slicing the jumps after coming off of tight rollbacks to make straight lines.  And it. was. hard.  Sherlock doesn't exactly...turn?  I've mentioned before that he's never done jumpers.  There are more reasons for that than just that he is owned by a 9-year-old.  Assistant Trainer A, who taught my lesson tonight, said before we even started that this was going to be tough for me because "you basically have to turn the Titanic like a speed boat."

Start by tracking right.

The first two were, for obvious reasons, the easiest.  You just had to line them up, stay straight, and think about turning the second you got to the 2nd fence.  Sherlock, apparently, gets a little teensy bit hot when he hasn't been ridden in 4 days, so he was all about throwing a party after fence #2 and running through my aids because OMG THERE WAS A JUMP AND I AM SO EXCITED.  That mindset is pretty out of character for him, but once I remembered to sit up more quickly and slam him with my outside leg (not really slam, but you get the idea), this actually ended up being our best rollback out of the three in the exercise.  I am NOT used to having to half halt this horse every 2 strides - he's normally a kick and tap with the crop to get moving kinda guy.  

second rollback

This was less rushy on Sherlock's part over the fences, but we were on the opposite side of the arena - closer to the gate to get back to the barn - so he was less receptive to the idea of turning and really tried to gallop towards his friends on this rollback.  Again with the half halts and the outside leg, and this became the second-best rollback. 

third rollback//only single fence

For whatever reason - location of the jump, my inability to sit up fast enough after that fence, the fact that I kept wanting to turn left here for some reason - this was the hardest turn for us to make.  I think that it was tighter than the others, as well, because we were only going over one fence, which meant that I really had to focus on my aids in order to get Sherlock to whip around nicely enough to get over the last fence.

And lastly..

One tight turn later, and it was a quick canter down the rail to try to make four offset jumps into a straight line.  Two of those jumps were centered, and two were super ridiculously skinny.  Sherlock again tried to gallop the entire thing.  Adding half halts after every fence led turned this into a success!

Despite how ridiculously challenging this whole thing was, I LOVED it.  I want to do it again like fifty-seven times until I get it exactly right.  And those speedy tight turns that we successfully pulled off make me feel more confident about our upcoming stadium round on Sunday.  

So ready for this.

Thank you to the words of encouragement that everyone wrote on my last post!  I am really and truly excited, even if I politely surrendered my favorite lesson saddle to another girl that's going and now I'm mildly freaking out about showing in a saddle that I've never ridden in.  Ahh.  

Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll have some time to type up a Leo update!  He cantered with his head down on the lunge today and it was incredible and I wish that I had gotten a picture!