Look of Elation

Can I just say, I have got to get someone to come take vid of my lessons sometimes. The fact that I don’t have video proof of last night is saddening.

Firstly, look at my sweet boy:

presh.

I booked it from work to the barn pretty much right at 1700 last night. S asked me to come early if I could, so I did my best. Grabbed pony, groom, snap chain, groom some more, “NO Vinny!” when he tried to bite me, and finally got tacked up and had a quick warm up of about 15 min while I waited for S to arrive. By the time he did, Vinny and I were ready to get started. This was truly a jump lesson.

The jumps in the ring were set up like so: Xrail to Xrail on one long side (four stride line). And small vertical to small vertical (four strides here) on the other long side. And there was an Xrail in the middle that we didn’t use at all.

We warmed up over one X going towards the barn. In true Pumpkinhead fashion, he slowly came to a halt right in front of the jump despite my keeping ‘leg on’ and keeping my eye focused on the second story viewing room. Truthfully, I can’t even be mad at this anymore. It’s just something he does. He stops before the first fence every time, no matter what.

I circle Vinny around and demand a more working trot as we head into the X again. Finally we go over it and continue a few more times. He is still not really in his ‘forward’ state yet. but he’s getting there. We do this jump twice coming from the other direction, and then we add in the second jump of the line. Our first attempt really made me LOL. I was smacking him with my crop as we headed into the first X and he kind of flopped himself over it and instead of cantering through the rest of the line, he wobbly-trotted through it and over the second X. Oh Vinny, you crack me up. S yells over at us “Again, please!” and off we go trotting around the ring and into the line again. Finally we canter right through it. Our first couple of times through this line we got a three and a half. Once vinny started to wake up, we got the four.

The real excitement that I discovered last night, is that once Vinny understands that we’re really jumping, he is quite fun and knows his job. As we landed on the correct lead out of the X rail line, S says “canter into the next line!” So I shorten up reins, half halt because now my boy is super excited, and we kind of blow through it. Okay okay. Whoa. I didn’t realize that this horse gets so worked up! How exciting!  It is now taking me almost ¾ of the ring to get him to come back down to trot again. I’m getting really excited about this horse now. Incase you didn’t notice, this is my first time doing a small course with this horse. BUT this kind of behavior is to my advantage I feel, because of my experience with ‘no-whoa’ horses. :D

S has us trot into the X line again, canter through, and we get a beautiful four! We canter forward and to the right into the vertical line and I sit back, heels down, hands up and talk to my boy. “Easy, easy” while throwing in a half halt. We come into the line at a lovely distance and get a nice forward three to the final fence. YAY!!! To my surprise I hear S, “keep going to the X line again!” I have no time here to express surprise, just gather myself and try my best to balance Vin through the corner and we head into the X line again in get the beautiful three! We land on the correct lead again, thank heavens, and S yells, “keep going!” so I settle him back again, easy, easy, half halt into the vertical, sit straight up and tall, hands and eyes up and forward, heels down, and we get another lovely three. At this point I know that I have a look of elation on my face. I cannot stop grinning at this success. We end our jump lesson on that note.

I am even more in love with this horse than before and very, very excited for the future possibilities.

S and viewers on the sidelines were full of compliments. I love this feeling. We have accomplished our first ‘real’ jump lesson together and did it well! Also I received a lovely txt this morning from S expressing his happiness again.

We ended our evening with an attempt to help M and her horse Little D cross the scary bridge that leads to the trails off the barn property. It was a semi-success I would say.

I used a one of those rubber mitt curry things to curry my boy down and get all of the sweat marks out, brushed some coat conditioner into his coat, mane and tail and threw him back into his stall with the fan on.

fail.