Reality Check

After two weeks of absolute magic in our lessons, I knew I couldn't expect it to last forever. Our lesson this weekend ended up being a little less magical-unicorns-dancing-on-rainbows-with-sunshine-and-happiness and a little more remember-that-your-horse-is-a-seven-year-old-OTTB-who-is-still-green-and-just-learned-how-to-pick-up-his-feet.

We warmed up fairly well at a decent w/t/c. Our canter work is definitely wayyy better in these last few weeks (yay!). We did some 20m circle work over a couple of poles w/t/c and she brought up the same point that she has for the last couple weeks - I'm too nice. I tend to be too giving with the reins and don't give him the poke in the belly when he is falling in. I need to work on being a little more assertive and a little less "nice".

As soon as we started jumping it went a little downhill. For some reason I was just casually looking down at the jump. Couldn't tell you why. So of course that made Charmer nervous about whatever monsters I was staring at. After a while we got over the fear of monsters, but it was not fantastic there for a little bit.

A little bit of Charmer's head shaking "wildness" came back (I put that in quotes because it was not as wild as I've dealt with before - it just wasn't as calm as the last two weeks). We started off our little course with a rollback, which he was not horribly thrilled about, so that got fairly significant head shakes almost every time.

Our course was trotting into the green gate, then canter rollback to little red crossrail, and then canter into the 2'3"ish vertical. We have definitely started to step up our cantering jumps game, which is really really exciting to me. We got a little wild to the vertical a few times, but it was definitely more manageable than he has been before.

I should mention that up to this point, especially with the trot fence in the beginning, I was getting him wayyy too deep into the jump. Finally about halfway through the lesson I listened to Trainer S and got myself together and stopped burying him at that first fence. Once I pulled it together, Charmer got a little less violent about his head shaking. He just needed me to, you know, ride.

Then we added a left turn circle after the blue vertical and headed to this cute little 2'6" yellow vertical. Unfortunately, I could not see a distance to this jump to save my life. We pulled this rail twice. Hard. But thankfully, Charmer was in a fairly forgiving mood and did not decide to dump my butt into the fence. Thanks pony <3

Sassy lead changes for the win

We schooled through our four jump course a few more times and finally I figured my life out at the yellow jump and stopped screwing him up and Charmer flew over it.

We also had a life-flashed-before-my-eyes moment at one point where I thought Charmer was going to take another step at the blue vertical, but instead he decided to go for it (he was right, I was wrong). So I in turn got super left behind, and ended up slipping my reins out to the buckle and only had my right hand left on the reins. I had a moment of "this is the end. He is going to kill me" but instead he just cantered a few strides while I got my reins back together and fixed my life.

Trainer S had us try that line again and it went a whole lot better (thank goodness) and pony got a whole lot of pats for not killing me.

We added on one final jump - a nice 2'3" purple vertical. Charmer was all "NO TOUCHY" again with this one. The first time we put all 5 jumps together, it was not great - I did not have enough forward and kept burying him at the fences - which in turn made him a grumpy pony and threw some nice I-didn't-like-that head shakes to tell me off. I deserved it.

Then we did the course a second time. And I actually insisted on forward momentum, stopped burying him at the deepest spot I could find, and actually looked up and rode. And it was one of the nicest courses I've done on him.

Trainer S was pretty happy with where we ended the lesson. She would have been happier if we had started at that point (lol), but by the end we actually kind of looked like we knew what we were doing. It was not my best ride, and Charmer made sure to tell me that. Even still, I am happy that we are at a better place than we have ever been. He is rideable now, even if he gets a little "wild" and now I have to work on setting him up better and riding more proactively. We are starting to be able to jump more than just two crossrails in a lesson. This lesson definitely helped bring me back to earth a little bit after having a couple really magical lessons, but even with a less-than-perfect lesson this week, I am still so proud of where our journey is taking us.