Rain, rain, go away...

I hate this weather. It's April, it needs to be warm and sunny!

So I won't be riding today as we only have an outdoor and, as the title of this post suggests, it's kind of raining outside. Yuck!

So we had our jumping lesson on Saturday as planned. Flatwork was pretty good actually especially since he had Friday off due to, you guessed it, more rain... Then we started jumping and we warmed up over a tiny vertical with placing poles on either side. We trotted in, cantered out. That really got Ben jumping with a nice, round bascule. Then the jump went up to 2'6" and we cantered into it. The first few times went well. We met the pole nicely, and while the distance was certainly tight for him (that was the point of the exercise) he managed to do it correctly every time.

Of course, nothing can go perfectly all of the time...

That being said, we of course came around the corner, met the pole on a perfect half-stride, then proceeded to stretch over the placing pole and crash through the fence. Then I proceeded to slide up his neck, catch myself, attempt to sit back, scare the crap out of my horse because I was hanging off the side of him, cause him to spook and jump right out from underneath me, and that is how I ended up on the ground.

We were both fine and I hopped right back on and my trainer put the combination into three cantering poles which we popped through twice, then she put it back up. We popped through two more times without a problem and then we did a course which actually went fantastically!

We did a vertical on the outside, oxer on the diagonal, bending line back to the first vertical in the opposite direction, outside line (same one that we failed at Tuesday night), then other diagonal to a skinny that we had a really long approach to.

The first jump went fantastically. Then it was a really tight turn to the oxer on the diagonal so we got there kind of close but he jumped UP and OVER instead of throwing his shoulders over, which is such a nice improvement! Back to the vertical in 4 strides which also went very nicely. Then we turned to the outside line, where he added a stride before the first of the line like a good boy. Then we jumped down the line in a quiet, even, balanced four strides. Who is this horse? Finished up with the skinny on the long approach where he was a tad wiggly but jumped it just fine.

So besides the whole falling off thing, it was a very successful lesson and I feel much better about his jumping! Then yesterday I woke up kind of sore from the fall so I passed on my original plans of doing conditioning sets on the loop and lunged him in the surcingle with side reins instead. He was a very good, quiet boy for that and he looked fantastic.

So tomorrow we have a jumping lesson and Wednesday a dressage lesson. Then Thursday is spring shots day. Busy week! Thanks for reading!