This lesson was my fourth time of jumping in a row.  Wow.  That's a lot of jumping.

Mariah was more grumpy when it came to tacking up.  I probably should've slapped her at some point, but I didn't. 

Only James came for a lesson, and he rode Cordell.  We had the lesson in the outdoor as per usual.

I walked about a lap, and then my trainer started giving me instructions for the exercise she wanted me to do.  As she began to talk to me, she was behind me, and since I was probably going to change the direction anyway, I turned Mariah around to face her.  It was such a nice turn, she was so with me!  My trainer really liked it too, and it tied into the exercise she was going to have do.

First she said she wanted me to weave a broken line going up the fence line, aka zig zag to and from the fence line.  She wanted me to do this while my reins were long enough that I had no / barely any contact with Mariah, and she wanted me to do it until I felt like she was really listening to my body.  Like she was really in sync with my body and following it freely.  (Another girl had done this with Mariah yesterday and it'd gone well.)

Then, when Mariah was doing well at that, I was to add something into the picture.  When it came time for her to turn to, say, the right, I was to try to feel just before / as Mariah was lifting that right forefoot and ask her right then to take a step with it.  If it was timed right, that extra step would be what made the turn.  If she got this, and took that extra step, then I was to let her walk straight as a reward.

This is the very beginning of turning the forehand.  Yesterday, they'd worked on moving her hindquarters, now with me we were going to do the forehand.  

Now, I've haven't really done things where you feel when a horse is about to take a step.  My trainer knew this.  She said that with this exercise, I could try as many times as I wanted and not have to worry about messing it up or frustrating the horse.  So that was reassuring.

One of the things that I want to learn to use really well is weight aids.  It's such a subtle, and yet if done right, effective way of guiding a horse.  So I was glad to experiment with it.

I figured out that it didn't take much.  Like, you might feel you have to really step down into that stirrup to get the horse to turn, but you don't.  It doesn't take much at all, especially if you use your whole body in alignment.  Turning right was easier for me than turning left, I think it's also Mariah's preferred direction.

If I would just sit up, and straight, and as even as possible, then it didn't take much to affect her course and get a good turn out of her.  I've always known that Mariah is sensitive to those types of aids, it's one of the things I've enjoyed about riding her, but which can wreak havoc if you're crooked.

After we were doing well at broken line, it was time to make an attempt at asking her to take that extra step.  I don't know how I picked up on when I needed to ask her to take that extra step, but somehow I realized I needed to ask it not when I felt her front foot lifting, because that wouldn't give me enough time, but when I felt her bearing down on her other front foot.  That would give me enough time to 'catch her' as she was lifting the foot I wanted to step to the side with.

Now, my trainer didn't say anything to me pretty much the whole time I was doing this.  So I wasn't as sure as I would've liked to have been that I was getting what I was asking for.  But I was feeling something different from Mariah, her turns felt more like I thought the stepping to the side would feel like, so I rewarded her several times.  Honestly, I got more right responses that I thought I would.  Stepping to the left was harder for both of us, as per usual.

(My trainer may have said something to me at one point about "Having some success, aren't you?" before the end of the exercise, but I don't remember that for sure.  She may have said it at the end to me.)

At the very end, my trainer saw us do one, which I wouldn't have said was our best one, and said that was what we wanted and to let Mariah walk straight.  That confirmed to me that I had been doing the right thing, so now I have an idea of what it should feel like.

Then she told me to pick up a rising trot to continue the warm up, then after that we were going to do some jumping.  She suggested that I do a figure 8 for the trot warm up, and while I don't think she would've been too mad if I hadn't, I think she really wanted me to do it.  Figure 8's are fine with me,  and it just so happened that two standards had been set up in a line for the bottom part of a barrel pattern.  They made convenient markers to make a figure 8 around.

The figure 8 went well.  My trainer told me to try to feel when she was leaning out through her outside shoulder and try to correct that using the inside rein / outside leg.  This most often occurred on the last half or fourth of the circle, just before going straight across the center to change direction.  Once again, it felt to me that Mariah wasn't as bent as she should be at all, but she was, and furthermore, she was not leaning.

So that went pretty well.  My trainer had us come down to walk and then we halted by her.  She said that what Mariah would do was roll her wither inward, thus putting weight to the inside, and then still be trying to make the turn.  By having that weight inward, it becomes hard for a horse to make a turn, as they've put weight on the foot they need to lift.  But, if they don't do that, it's almost like they actually roll their wither to the outside to take weight off the inside shoulder / foot, and it is just so much better / easier for them to make that turn.  It's better for them, it feels better to us, it's just better.

Then my trainer outlined for me what we were going to be doing next for jumping.  She left us to go walk out the course we were going to be taking.

It was like the telephone poles to the log standard, but this time the log standard had been set farther back and almost alongside the telephone poles, so that you couldn't (well, you could, but it'd be hard) make the bending line to it that I did on Rugar and Cordell.

First, we were going to jump the telephone poles.  We do straight, along the log standard jump until we'd just passed it.  Then my trainer wanted me to step down into the inside stirrup and try as much as possible to get Mariah to follow my weight onto a circle to the right.  This circle should spit us out on a line to the second jump, the log standard.  She said this might be tricky at first because Mariah would land fast after the first jump, but she would figure it out after some attempts.

I wasn't sure if my trainer wanted us to make a full circle before going to the second jump.  She walked it out again and clarified that it was, indeed, a half circle starting and ending two straight lines.  

My trainer's number one thing with circles is that they begin and end where they started, as that's what makes a circle a circle.  She told me that the reason she harps on that with people is so that, when they're doing things like making a half circle to get somewhere, their half circle is actually round and bent.  Because if it's not, things won't go well.  So she harps on that so people learn to make round circles.

The last thing she told me before we headed out was that I needed to have a plan after landing from the second jump.  I needed to know where we were going.  So I decided we'd just come back to the jump exercise by going to the left.

Sure enough, Mariah landed in canter after the first jump, but it was a slow canter. I didn't feel that we were ready when I started to make that half circle, so I did two or three complete circles before going to the second jump.  It was a good thing I did, because I think James may have been on my line after the second jump, but I didn't know that and I only assume it because I think I heard my trainer say something to him about it.

Anyhow, we went over the second jump pretty well, but it also felt weird to me because she actually slowed down before the jump.  My trainer commented that it probably felt weird for her to actually think about her jumping and slow down like that, so it wasn't a bad thing.

I think after that we may have done this exercise three more times after the first round, but I'm not sure.  I do know that it didn't take long for Mariah to slow down after the first jump at all, the last two times at least she just kept the trot.

I did my best to try to keep her from leaning through the half circle, and she was pretty good at this.  She wasn't over leaping the jumps, which was nice, nor was she trying to dodge out, and she picked up on what we were doing quickly.  It's one of the nicest jumping rounds I've done with her.

The second to last attempt at this would've been our last, but she knocked the last jump and we didn't want to end on that.  This last time was just wonderful, she was so calm and lovely and straight in her turn and just took me happily to the second jump.  Such a contrast from two years ago!

My trainer had me bring her to a halt and dismount right there to reward her.  Because, she said, that's a little kid horse right there.  That's what the little kids need.  That doesn't mean she'll be that way all the time, but for that round she was.  So, cupcakes and champagne, we were there today and we were going to be happy about it. 

It was such a lovely jumping round on her, so calm and peaceful and just delightful!  I never once consciously grabbed for mane that I can remember, because she wasn't taking those huge leaps she used to, but jumping this small jumps as she should.  Enough that she didn't knock them, but no more than that.  It was wonderful, such a difference from the days where she launched over those little jumps in the indoor that weren't even as big as the ones we did that day.

She is truly starting to become a pleasant horse to ride.

(I missed a lesson the week before this as that Tuesday landed on a major holiday, so no lesson that week.)

Actual lesson 7/11/2023