Back to the Grind

In late August/early September of 2018, Banner and I began weekly lessons with Trainer C, which has been such a game changer for my riding and for our partnership. Trainer C also has ridden him lots when he was still with his previous owner so she has a really good understanding of him. In the nearly year and a half we have been in weekly lessons, I have worked very hard to not take off too many weeks in a row. We've had a few times where it has been off - when she had a baby, when I got deathly ill last year, when I went on my honeymoon, or sometimes when my work schedule has prevented it. I try extremely hard not to miss more than 3 lessons in a row because it takes a tremendous toll on my motivation and my confidence.

Because of the holidays, my work schedule got all messed up for December and I ended up having to work on the 17th, so I cancelled that lesson, and then obviously the 24th & 31st were Christmas Eve & New Years Eve, respectively, so we opted out on those two lessons. I was feeling pretty okay about missing just the three in a row, but then unfortunately I caught the plague right around Christmas and it lasted forever. I even went and got checked for pneumonia because I was struggling so much. Luckily I didn't have pneumonia and did end up eventually getting better (after 2.5+ weeks of dying), but due to the fact that I couldn't hardly breathe without coughing, I had to cancel our lesson on the 7th as well. This probably put me out of lessons for longer than I've ever been out since I began weekly lessons again in 2018.

B was such a little firecracker but felt fantastic. Since he hadn't jumped a single thing in 5 weeks, I knew he was gonna be a spicy lil dude. We trotted over a pole on the ground a bit and he was convinced that he just had to jump it. Which I mean I giggled the whole time so it wasn't too bad but definitely a bit comical. I tried cantering over the pole after he settled a bit and he immediately bucked. And I laughed. After we warmed up more and spent a little more time settling his brain and warming up his muscles, he felt really fantastic. 

Since we had so much time off jumping, we spent this lesson working on the basics again. We just jumped one single jump, that probably never went over 2', but it was super productive! We worked on a circle each way for a while until he settled his psycho just a bit. Then we did some figure 8's over the jump, which got him pretty excited, but a manageable level of excited! Finally we did a bunch of halting in a line after the fence to get him to be slightly less exuberant over the fence. 

Pictured is our most recent setup for jumping. His Nathe bit with an instant gag rein on it. Its a different setup than most people are probably used to seeing but it is working for us. His Nathe bit encourages him to stretch and be forward into the bridle, which is great! But he also has realized he's a touch stronger than I am in this bit and likes to grab it and pull sometimes, especially after fences. So the instant gag rein on there allows me to have just a bit of extra strength when he goes to get a little wild. 

We've only used this particular setup twice, but its been working pretty well and I'm pretty excited to see how it continues working over time for us. Hopefully next week's lesson lets us get back into the swing of things and getting back to where we were when the warmth was still here.

Back to another lesson tomorrow! So hopefully we start getting back to doing a bit more challenging stuff!