The Halo Slipped

And that's a good thing! 

Playing with Gemini, "fallen angel pony"

I was so afraid of screwing up my perfect, beautiful, could-do-no-wrong actual golden pony that I rode him right into a run out on Thursday. It was near the beginning of the lesson and we did a six stride line with a slight left curve at the end. I missed the distance to the in and then held my breath and did nothing other than tip and pray while he drifted right and then ducked out right of the second fence. While thoughts of that weekend's novice entry ran through my head, JT talked me through it and said "you need to make a decision and you need to be wrong sometimes, but you have to commit". And somehow that snapped me out of it and I started riding the horse. It felt like being back on Ben, balance up, look at the jump, bring the outside shoulder around the turn. 

I don't have videos of BB jumping still, so you get old Ben videos. I hadn't watched these since last year and thoroughly enjoyed that walk down memory lane. 

Anyways, BB and Ben are very different horses, but the general principle of ride the horse, make decisions, believe that you can do this still applies. And the thing they both have in common that I need to keep telling myself is that they have plenty of scope, so even if the distance is wrong, they're fine. Ben needed commitment because if I screamed with him there was no way we were going over the jump. BB needs commitment because he is half pony, and if I don't commit then he might possibly find a slightly easier way of doing things that doesn't necessarily involve going over the fence. This is absolutely not to say that they both don't cut my adult ammy butt a lot of slack, but they both require me to actually make decisions. As I've rolled a Ben sale ad around in my head I've thought the line "You can miss but you have to be committed to your miss" and I feel like that actually holds true for most horses I have jumped. It essentially means that I can't stare at the wrong distance getting ever closer and do nothing (typing this out it seems so obvious, but... yeah... so much of riding is...). Stretch up, support, add leg, and then a light bouncing up and down hand feeling that worked wonders for Ben actually works pretty well for BB too. Ben has a distinct pulling down into the hand as he spooks that BB does not have, but the idea of the slight up and down bouncing hand helps BB rock back onto his hocks and get a really, really nice jump.

OMG LOOKIT HOW CUTE THOSE EARS ARE

With my refound decision making abilities, the rest of the lesson continued swimmingly. We had started out with a really interesting exercise. Down a cavaletti line on the quarterline in 6 strides, left hand turn over a crossrail oxer across the diagonal, then a right hand 10m half-circle to go down the same cavaletti line, this time in 7 strides. While doing this I was thinking how grateful I was to be on a smaller horse. I watched my lesson mate do it beautifully on her large Irish mare and was super impressed. 

We then moved on to course work with all of the lines being six strides other than a one stride line across the diagonal. It all went well and at the end I had JT bump the jumps up a bit more since we were entered in Novice for the POP show four days later. And whaddya know, the pony jumps the slightly larger jumps just the same as the smaller ones. Good boy!!! 

The next day we had a dressage lesson with the same idea of "touch the (precious) pony". And it was great. He's very bendy and supple and trotting straight down a (very long) centerline was really the hardest part. We ran through Novice Test B. JT had me emphasizing bend, stating that "you can ride a lot deeper into the corners than on a large horse, but that means you need more bend".  The test also has short diagonals both directions in the trot in it, which look pretty atrocious if you don't emphasize the bend. We still can get a lot more consistent, but we made so much progress in one lesson.

I spent most of the week prior riding him bareback because he managed to cut himself right in front of the girth area. Also, what good is having a pony if you can't bomb around bareback. 

Lovely placement, sir

The bareback rides did wonders for my shoving into the canter with my seat, and BB and I had reached a happy agreement in which I didn't shove and he politely picked up the correct lead with just a little lift off the inside leg and slip of the outside leg back. I had 100% been ignoring reins for doing that transition, so he was coming up above the bit during the transitions. But JT pointed out that I needed that reset and she didn't see me shove with my seat once during the dressage lesson. All it took was adding a little connection back in, and we had lovely up transitions. The down needed a bit more prep than I was giving them, but we got it towards the end. 

It's so fun to be in this lovely stage of still getting to know each other but also becoming more confident in our partnership each day. He has started greeting me in his stall and pasture, which is also a great feeling. 

More on this later, but he still seems to be getting more fond of me daily even though I do things like dress him up in aquamarine fly gear