Late again. Came up against a pair of deadlines, and one of them won. The other is still looming, but a break was needed. Another riding lesson would have been nice, too, but at least I’ve got a double dose of jumping to look forward to for next week. And, hopefully, Murphy as well, since we got to put down requests for horses for next week’s double feature.
This week, though, it was Fleur. I got to choose between Fleur and Gamir, and although Gamir is by far the better jumper, I wasn’t so sure about jumping him in the paddock. I’ve seen that he can get really frisky, and my instructor confirmed this. So, Fleur it was. Of course, by the end of the lesson, I had the distinct impression that she had been a lot friskier than Gamir. ;P Fortunately, though, not very spooky, so it didn’t really bother me.
We continued along the same theme as with the dressage, with focusing on finding and maintaining a good rhythm. Fleur’s canter is pretty poor (short, flat strides), but once I allowed her a bit more rein (I do get a bit cautious on her outdoors) not just across the fences but when just galloping as well she moved forward pretty well. For the most part, the exercise was pretty basic, and the idea was that we were supposed to treat the fences as just little things that happened along a stretch of cantering.
It worked quite well going to the right, but when we switched to going to the left, I ended up having Fleur run past the fence a couple of times. The problem was that she kept landing in the wrong canter, and as I tried to correct this I lost focus on steering and framing her. Its not something that happens to me a lot when jumping, so I wasn’t as effective at correcting it as I would have liked to be. Eventually, however, I managed to get at least one correct landing and one where my instructor noted that I did things right but Fleur’s poor canter still gave the wrong result.
Overall, the main thing I took away from that lesson was actually jumping another horse than Murphy (or another pony) outdoors.