JUMP!

Jumping Gatsby today was fun we had some really tough moments but with Fiona's help i ended on a really good note, I'm so happy. 

When I got there  I spent some time grooming Gatsby and just giving him so love, he was really good and cuddly. I tacked him up and got on. Fiona asked me what I would like to do with Gatsby and I said jumping as I am really enjoying doing it as it's something I thought I wouldn't go back to doing but I did and I'm really happy with it. I'm starting to remember why I enjoyed doing it and had fun because I lost a lot of the fun that I used to have when I was at Broomfield, but I was happy because I was riding Gatsby. 

We started off warming up the important thing was making sure that I didn't use all my energy to early, we worked over poles starting off going rising and then when I went down the long side moving in to my jump seat, I had to make sure though that I didn't over use my muscles to early and push my self to far and that I was quite stable and balanced. There will be pictures but I am putting them at the end of this post. 

Once I had done this and felt confident we moved on to turning it on to a jump to get Gatsby more 'pingy' and off my leg we worked on doing walk to canter transitions. It amazes me that a couple of weeks ago I couldn't do them and now I don't struggle anywhere near as much as I used to, it really proves to me that I can ride better than I thought I could do. It was all about getting my striding right we had a couple of bad jumps but some that were good, and we discovered that Gatsby was trying to escape to the left, so I was over compensating without realising it by pushing him to the left. Once we figured this out we got a couple of nice jumps. 

We attempted to do an upright with him, and I liked the idea but I think in my mind I didn't think I could do it. I went over it a couple of times and it just got worse until at one point I lost my stirrup and the saddle tipped on me. I was convinced that I was going to fall off but Gatsby just stopped and let me get off to sort my saddle out so I didn't actually fall back. So we put it back down to being a cross rail and went over that a couple of times making sure that we ended the lesson a good note and we had a couple of really good jumps at the end. I then walked him down and cooled him off. I am really happy with how my riding is going considering I haven't jumped until two weeks ago in over a year, so the fact that my riding is developing makes me feel a lot better, but I know towards the end I was getting tired so I'm not to surprised about the mishap at the vertical. But I am so happy with what we did. 

Now on to what you've all been waiting for the pictures! 

Until Next Time

A Girl With A Dream