Rage Quit

It was a good thing we'd had a great lesson on Wednesday AND that I was sitting next to my coworker who walked me through the process. Otherwise the combo of learning Eventpass and a new Show Management System might've been enough to make me stick to unrated shows and recognized eventing. But we fought through and I *think* I am entered in the December HITS. Sadly we are not doing hunters. Turns out PW doesn't want to be embarrassed by me and thought we should do some ticketed schooling BEFORE we entered actual classes. To the best of my knowledge ticketed schooling, that means you pay a fee (a mere $30 at WEC, but WAIT you have to be entered in the show and have paid all the misc fees to do a ticketed schooling, so $30 is a bit deceiving) to go jump around the jumps that you will be showing over, typically while other people are in the ring and on the Tuesday before classes start on Wednesday. So $267 of entry fees + $80 of my USEF membership + $300 for BB's lifetime USEF registration and we're golden to go to HITS in December and do 4 jumper classes over 2 days. The actual entry fee isn't bad for 4 classes, so now we've just got to play a bit more in jumper land this year to make the USEF memberships worthwhile. 

Anyways, back to the lesson and away from the finance (and patience) breakdown. I think this lesson was FINALLY where it clicked, what so many trainers have now told me in different ways. He needs to have enough pace so that I'm not doing much the last few strides. It is FINE if I need to add a bit of spur to support him for the longer spot. But I SHOULD NOT be chasing the last few strides. We got that in lines a few weeks ago working on dividing them into two halves with the GO-2-3-4 and then assesss-2-3 in a 7 stride line. But the feeling hadn't really happened for singles until Wednesday.  

It wasn't a super pretty lesson TBH and my position went out the window a couple of times. But we jumped all the things and all the lines on stride the first time.

Progress, slow and steady. 

His level of dedication to not peeing in the trailer, good boy

This was 1.05m. PW commented that he jumps even better as the jumps get bigger. I was actually physically tired from this lesson, which isn't normal for me. But the effort BB puts in over the bigger fences means I am having to do more in an *attempt* (often failed obv in the video) to maintain my position.