Lots of Homework

I'm pretty much the world's worst blogger, and I'm just owning it at this point, but I've had media from our outing with my trainer that was 3 weeks ago and didn't get around to posting it. Oops. I really intended to, but my dad, husband and I went on a week long trip right after my clinic. It was so fun, incredibly healing, and a great respite from life. Then I got back and went into full swing on my "new" job. I've off and on been working for my vet for nearly a year, but of course with all the things that had happened with my mom, I couldn't be 100% there. Now, I'm working with them more regularly and getting trained on the phone system which has been a big learning curve but an awesome experience.

So anyways, blog got backburned again (big shock) but I do have some fun stuff to write about, even if its a little late. 

Today's post is for my lil chestnut lady, and tomorrow we will follow up with Charm's weekend as well. Two posts in two days? Wild, I know. But this is what happens when you actually have content!!

My trainer was here for a fantastic Fri/Sat clinic at the end of September and ahhh every time she comes out it just reminds me how much I deeply miss her now that she lives 4-4.5hrs away. She's super biomechanics focused and she can create super fun challenging exercises for the horse and rider, but always does her absolute best to avoid overfacing the horses. Its a great balance and her style works really well for me. It's been really difficult to find a solid program that I love since she left.

V was my second ride of the day on Friday and boy was I feeling it. My fitness level is not the best right now and it showed. Throughout the weekend I really discovered how much I was fighting the balance of my saddle on her as well so I've been working on some different shimming options to help keep us both more comfortable. 

This is where my leg wants to be 24/7 on her
even though these are teeny jumps
which is obviously not ideal.

Verge is a horse who is a little skeptical of the world sometimes and it pops up in our jumping work, so I asked my trainer what her thoughts were about her occasional stopping issue. It often doesn't seem to be from fear like some horses, but when she gets a little unsure, she doesn't trust me enough when I tell her its okay, keep going. Its a strange change from my boys who are almost a little too gung-ho sometimes haha.

We practiced an exercise where I stopped us, a few strides away from the jump, let her look at it from a distance and picked up a trot to pop over. It turned out to be a super good exercise for us and seemed to build V's confidence, considering she never stopped on her own accord during the whole lesson, even when we introduced her to her first grid! We got good homework from SJ day and I was pretty thrilled with my little red mare. She is a vastly different ride than I'm used to, but its not a bad thing and I find her super super fun.

Day two brought XC, and she was my first ride that day. Her bravery about these weird scary logs has gone way up after a few field trips, and she no longer shies away just from trotting next to a big jump. She is even getting bolder about the changing footing and is marching right into the water jump with little to no hesitation on the first try. 

I got my XC game face on and we went through the paces in the field. She's a very surefooted and smart young horse so its an absolute blast to have a canter around with her because it is very safe and balanced. We repeated the same stopping exercise out with the logs in the field and it proved quite positive! It helped with actually being able to ride forward to the fence instead of her thinking backwards and me trying to drive her in anyways. 

We began stringing together more and more of an actual course and she finally ended up jumping all of the intro fences!! Unfortunately most of our intro fences are all the same, just a teeny log on the ground, but there's a few that are a little different. And we trotted and cantered through the water jump on several of our courses which turned out to be a blast as well. 

We even managed to try our hand at a few BN fences! A triple log stack, an a-frame, the true BN ditch and a downbank. Unfortunately by the end of our schooling, while she was doing just absolutely super, I pointed her at a rolltop, that is really the same size as the a-frame and triple log stack, but for some reason it unraveled her confidence at these "bigger" fences. We slithered over it once (yes it was technically a jump but man it was not a fun one haha) and then on another attempt she considered going and said a hard no at the last second, but I was too committed at that point, and fighting my position in the saddle did not help and we parted ways. 

Not exactly where I wanted to be...

Luckily, I had my airvest on (omg 15/10 landing on that thing lemme tell you, so soft & comfy) so I was not even a little sore from the tumble, and V kept her braincells afterwards and was quiet and easily caught despite being a little confused by what just happened. We decided to just give the rolltop a rest for the day and I'll play with it again in the spring when we have a little more schooling and relationship together. 

All of our training was not wasted though!! While she decided she didn't enjoy me parting ways with her and wasn't sold on the idea of jumping any more BN fences, she felt absolutely super when we played with the intro course once more! She was balanced, straightforward and quiet to all of the Intro logs and cantered over them easily. I kicked myself for trying "one more fence", but also I'm still not 100% sure why it went wrong either, since she had jumped several fences of the same height already.

Cute as anything I've ever seen over the BN triple log

Nonetheless, we walked away a much more schooled pony, a lot of homework and a good chunk of media. I felt really disheartened at the time, as we had gotten a lot of comments on my position while I was riding her that I was too forward in the tack, but Charmer gave me a big boost of confidence that I didn't totally suck as a rider (more on that tomorrow). 

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend with my little red mare & I am really enjoying her a lot. It's been a minute since I've had such a young, green horse and I'm remembering to cut us both some slack when it's not perfect. She's further along than I would've expected her to be at 6 months home, so I really can't complain. It will be a fun winter continuing to build our relationship and install more buttons for next year!