End of Term

Well it is week 10 of Winter term, next week is finals week, oh noes. This also means I only have two weeks left of riding Mr Oscar! I will be sad, but at the same time it will be a nice break. He is a fun horse, but it gets a little boring riding the same circles three times a week. So this morning my coach/teacher gave me a little jumping lesson on Oscar! YAY! Very much fun. I didn't feel like I was doing super well, but she said I did good. We weren't jumping high, but were working on my form. I think I have a hard time with staying with him- I was anticipating the jump and getting into two-point too soon. So we were working on not doing that and keeping my shoulders up. I think I am getting a little bit better about the shoulders- it didn't feel like I REALLY fell through this time. Could always be better though. Also worked on getting straight to the jump, no drunken sailor cantering. And so it was my first time going over a pair of jumps- instead of jumping one fence and stopping! I had to canter out of the corner straight to the first jump, then turn and come diagonally out of the other corner to a little narrow jump. I'll just say right now, it is so much harder than it looks! That jump was so little! It is hard to get straight to it. But I sort of managed, Ha. Oscar is such a good boy- truly the perfect horse to learn jumping on. He doesn't take advantage of you, and will mostly jump from anywhere. He doesn't ever refuse a jump, and will take off long or short if need be. Which happened kind of a lot today, ha....I was having a hard time getting the right distance- we kept getting to the jump too long or too short. How do you get it right? Is it just a pace thing? Just getting to it at the right speed? Um.. That would have been a good question for my coach, ha. But anyways, I wish I had a video of my last jump- it felt really good! Got the right distances on both jumps and was a lot straighter, and had to throw in a flying lead change! Maybe sometime this week I will set up a little tiny crossbar to jump on my own, and bring my boy to take a video! Then the world can laugh at my mediocre lack of jumping skills! But it could also help me...I can look and see what I'm doing wrong. After all, I'm still just beginning to learn and everybody has to start somewhere!