Lesson #134: It's Too Loud in Here!

Back to my regularly scheduled Sunday morning lessons! It feels good to be back in a routine that I both enjoy and am familiar with. The weather is good and Ariel continues her solitary confinement due to... unruliness. That's right folks, this mare ain't sick or lame or anything of that nature... she's an Appaloosa mare... with a HUGE crush on a paint Dutch Warmblood mare named Harlequinn. Actually, that 'relationship' is mutual and has been the cause of some destructive behaviour on Ms. Ariel's part. She's been relegated to the 'solitary confinement', which is just a smaller pen that prevents her from racing around stupidly and injuring herself and she's in a single paddock that's adjacent to others so she doesn't have anyone to boss around. It seems to be working because she's not as fussy and cranky and opinionated as she normally is. Don't get me wrong, she isn't all alone, she's just not in a multi-horse paddock. She does have the resident miniature horse, Waldo in the next pen...

Hi! I'm Waldo and I'm a miniature horse. Everyone adores me. I mean look at how cute I am!

The warm up is brief as if we get right into the lesson with a purpose. Indeed we have a purpose, we are jumping a course again. There are 3 jumps in this course and they are placed in a less challenging pattern. Thank heavens. We start by taking each jump on its own and then move towards combining them, at the trot. My rides in are straighter and with purpose but as soon as Ariel takes off, things go wrong and my 2 point is a mess and I can't seem to pull myself up, upon Ariel's landing. I can literally hear myself chattering away as I approach the jump with thoughts like "half halt half halt... heels down... flexion for the turn... etc". It's as if I can't turn those thoughts off.

Sheri reminds me that this is problematic for a series of reasons and one of them is the amount of weight that ends up on her front hooves upon landing--her lovely ~950lbs plus my ~130lbs. That's a lot of weight coming on 2 hooves. *sigh* I try and try again and variations of a poor ride over and out range from being left behind, being left WAY behind, hovering too far forward over the pommel, landing on Ariel's neck... the list goes on. It was yet another miserable ride and I'm not exactly excited about the way things turned out.

Deb... sorry to say but that wasn't one of your better jumping lessons.

I think that my suspicion about a weak 2 point will probably need to be looked at further... Sheri's suggestion? Do 2 point during my warm ups and hold it for as long as I can so I can build those core muscles... my other homework? Do some yoga, damn it!