Jumping!!

I love my pony. So much. She's freaking amazing. Word of warning, there are going to be lots of pictures in this post because I love my pony. Beware.

Big smile because I love my pony!

I hopped on Rush about 30 minutes before the lesson was scheduled to start. I've decided to start riding her in lessons to get her acclimated to being ridden with other horses as well as the motions and sounds that come with jumping. For some reason jumping spooks her so I'm seeing if I can get her desensitized this way- she's much less spooky when I'm on her as opposed to when I'm on the ground. Anyways, I walked her around on a loose rein until the lesson started, even taking a few loops around the barn. This worked really well to get her loose and calm and relaxed.

Little ballerina

She moved out really well today, with minimal bracing and rushing. I love days like this because she allows me to actually use my leg on her, both using calves for support and using my leg to get her straighter. Usually when I attempt to straighten her out she just gets fast, which is both frustrating and unhelpful, so I'd take this over that any day!

This was a moment that happened quite a bit during the lesson, however. For some reason when she's not hyper and focusing on going fast, she ducks and weaves from contact and is much less steady in it. Have to figure out the reasoning behind this.

What you see here is me apparently not being able to balance. For some reason on super smooth horses it takes me a long time before I can actually balance properly. This happened on Willie too when I first started riding him- it's like I'm incapable of getting my butt out of the saddle, and when I do manage it my upper body just wants to sink until it's parallel with the neck. I'm going to try shortening my stirrups and see if that helps, but if it's the same thing that happened with Willie, it just takes some time to get used to it.

 

Cantering.. ugh. Still kind of a rough area for us. To the right she's slow and maintainable, but very over bent. She bulges out with her shoulder and shoves her head and hind into the center, but when I try to straighten her out she gets worried and fast. To the left she's just ridiculous.. fast, unresponsive and frustrated. Stupid racehorses to the left.

Smile!

 

Soo.. jumping! We did some. It was awesome. She's definitely not really balanced enough to be actively trained in jumping yet, but she's such a doll. We started with a bunch of poles and gradually got bigger to a cross pole; ironically, as the jump got bigger she got less and less worried about it. She obviously has some worries about going up to the jumps and wiggles a bit, but ultimately she goes over them once I close my leg on her so I am all smiles and happiness right now.

After all that hard work she got a bath and blinded everyone in the vicinity.