For this lesson, I got to pick my lesson horse.  Riggs wasn't available, she was for James to ride.  

When my trainer told me I could pick, she said something along the lines of "For your lesson, you can choose from any of the broke horses."  She said she felt she always needed to add the qualification of 'broke', because if she asked little kids what horse they wanted to ride, they'd say "Yucca!"  or "Faye!"  (I assume Faye is the red roan filly.)  Obviously they can't ride those unbroke and young horses XD 

(Broke means a horse that let a person ride them without bucking or anything like that.) 

I seriously considered choosing Rugar for my lesson.  I've never ridden him in the roughly three years my trainer has owned him.  But I'm pretty sure that if I'd picked him, my trainer would have let me ride him.  (Rugar is a light bay thoroughbred.) 

But I chose Mariah because I was familiar with her and knew what to expect.

Mariah was grumpy today. When I started brushing her off, she came around with her head to me, and then tried out nipping my sleeve / wrist. I mildly slapped her on the side of her cheek and she didn't try it again.

That should have warned me, though. When I went to pick out her hooves and turned my back to her, I knew she had turned her head to me again. I should've known what she was going to do from before, but nope, I let myself get nipped and it was a sharp nip too.

But I didn't hesitate. I swung around like lightening with the full intent to slap her good. Mariah was like "Oh shoot I messed up" and backed up till she hit the end of the lead rope. Thus, I didn't actually make any hard contact with her, but the message was clear, I wasn't going to play around.

My trainer was right there and saw the whole thing. She was perfectly fine with it and really liked the fact that I wasn't going to let Mariah get away with that. She said something along the lines of "The look on her face when you turned around and she realized you knew what's up-!" Apparently, the day before someone who'd never ridden Mariah had their first lesson her, and didn't know 'what's up', so I just had to remind her that she can throw us dagger looks but she can't nip us.

Other than that, it was the usual Mariah who pins her ears and bites at the fence when you're tacking her up. We know she's not in any physical pain, it's just her nature to be that way, especially if she's not corrected for it.

Anyhow, I got her tacked up. James came for his lesson, as I mentioned, but not Vivie. Trainer told me I could start warming her up out there, and then asked me if I wanted to jump her. My reply wasn't too convincing; I just said "I guess" in a nonchalant tone.

See, I knew I had some stuff to work on when it came to jumping, and I did want to work on that. But, at the same time, with it being Mariah and all that, I wasn't too keen to. So I was very much on the fence about it.

Trainer told me I didn't have to jump her and that she was giving me the choice. But of course, if we were going to jump or not would affect how we did our warm up.

So, I went out and fiddled with my stirrups. They'd been unrolled, so it messed everything up. Even at the very last hole, they were dressage length for me, though I didn't realize that fully until after I mounted.

Soon after I got on, James came out to the back as well with my trainer. Trainer brought Yucca, the two year old colt, out for her to work with as well.

Our walk warm up was literally one lap around the arena. I did think about doing some sort of exercise, but just... didn't, lol.

Next the outdoor arena, there's a huge farm field. Well, they've moved in an irrigator right next the north short side of the arena, with plastic arms that sway in the wind and scare horses. Somehow, it didn't register with me that hadn't been there last week, and thus I would've been totally unprepared if Mariah had taken fright at it. But Mariah was totally chill with it, didn't even bat an eye going past it, thankfully.

After that walk warm up, my trainer told me to go into trot. She wanted me to do lots of transitions between rising trot and sitting trot, while also making sure that Mariah had enough time to settle into the rising trot. I could choose what exercise I would use to do this, but it had to meet those two requirements.

So, I chose to do the circle in each corner exercise. I would do the circles and the short side of the arena between them in sitting trot and the long straightaways in rising trot.  

For the most part, I think we did alright with this.  Again, I struggled with sitting it well, sometimes I had to feel of it and sometimes I didn't.  But Mariah would slow down, and I didn't hang on her, and I don't think I made her mad with my jouncing around. 

After we'd done that for awhile going both directions, then we came down to walk.  Then my trainer again asked me if I wanted to jump her.  I said that I would if I could get these stirrups shortened up, then came over the rail and halted Mariah.

Now, I don't have much experience with shortening or lengthening stirrups from the saddle, but Mariah stood still for me, and it wasn't too hard this round.  My trainer has punched holes farther back in the stirrup leather, like way back, and I shortened it back to the first one.  Sure enough, that made the length much more reasonable for jumping.

Then my trainer told me to have a canter around in each direction with a circles somewhere in there for each direction.

Our transitions were terrible, in my opinion, but they did get us to the canter.  I didn't bother to sit Mariah's really fast canter after a bit but chose to rise up into a half seat.  Overall, the cantering went well, and that was the end of our warm up. 

Now, for the jumping, I'll just upload my diagram here, so you'll know what jumps I'm talking to.  Keep in mind it's not to scale or anything, but it'll give you a rough idea.  Also, the jumps are not actually red, green, or blue, but I refer to them that way in this lesson.  And as before, they were verticals that were a little above one foot tall.

My trainer wanted me to jump the blue jump by itself both as a warm up and so I could see what Mariah might do.  Then, if that went well, we'd go onto the key-hole jumping exercise that I did with Riggs. 

I didn't know how Mariah would act, but I did know that if I acted like she was going to be squiggly and fast and whatever else, that raised the chances that she would be.  So I chose to treat her as if she was Riggs, that is, that she'd take me straight to the jump, but to be prepared in case she didn't.

So, I aimed her at that blue jump.  And guess what?  I could feel that she was checking with me, like, 'We're going to this jump, right?'  I kept myself aimed straight at that jump, and that was enough for her.  She popped it nicely and we landed in canter.  I also tried to hold myself back and up.

We did that two more times, and each time she went straight to that jump with no fuss, because I wasn't fussing about it.  I tried to leave her alone, but at the same time communicate that yes, I did want to jump this jump. 

As we came around after that last third jump, my trainer told me to jump the blue jump again, then take a bending line to the green jump, then come around to do the bending line from the red jump to the blue jump.  So, the same key-hole formation that I was doing with Riggs last time, only going a different direction.

For some reason, I completely forgot that I was supposed to do that.  I literally went to the blue jump as if I was going to do the exact same thing I'd done before and totally forgot about my bending line to the second jump.  Fortunately, my trainer noticed that I wasn't looking for the line to my second jump.  Just before we reached the blue jump she told me to be looking for my next jump.

That reminded me that I was supposed to be doing the key-hole course.  I literally charted in my path to the second jump just as we were jumping the blue one.  Surprisingly, we got a good line to the second jump and went over it without a hitch.

Mariah landed in canter, as per usual, but it was on the wrong lead.  So I had to bring her back down to trot as we came around to do the second bending line.

I took a longer line to the first jump of this bending line, which wasn't the best, but we made it.  The problem came after that first jump.  Sure enough, unlike before, I was looking for that second jump.  But I was looking too much; I took an actual bent line to the second jump and thus, put Mariah at a diagonal to it, which my trainer had warned me against.  

Mariah didn't like this, and started to squiggle out to the right.  I tried to correct her, but didn't think I'd make it and we'd miss the jump, so I sat up to slow her down and stop her so we could come back to it. 

However, slowing her down gave me enough time to correct her enough that at the last moment we actually made it over the jump.  Go figure. Ironically, when I wasn't looking for my line, I got it good, and when I was, I didn't and we nearly missed the jump.

My trainer explained this to me, and I made sure not to do that again, and Mariah gave me no more trouble about dodging out from a jump after that. 

We jumped the course a second time and it was a good round.  We popped the first one nicely, and I got a good line to the second one as well.  She landed in canter again, but this time she was on the lead we needed to turn to come around to the second line of jumps.  So I didn't bring her back to trot, but rose into my half seat and decided to go into the line in canter.

The third jump, which was the first jump of the second bending line, was a little wild feeling and kinda threw me for a loop.  But I was determined to get to that second jump, and that was all I focused on.  I had already picked out my spot of where I would turn Mariah to face that second jump, and sure enough, we made it on the line we needed.

It was a little crazy and for several moments afterward as we cantered away, I didn't feel that I could sit up to slow her down.  But I managed.  That was definitely our best round of jumping. 

It's so different from how Mariah used to be when it came to jumping.  She was chill and listening to me the whole time, and while she always jumped enough that she never touched the verticals, they weren't the massive leaps she used to take.

We took a break right after that as a reward for Mariah.  And wouldn't you know it, the icing on the cake was the fact that she stretched down!  Which is rare enough for Mariah, but I could feel her engage her back and lift it!!!!  It felt AMAZING.  

Because of that, and the fact that we'd had a final good jumping round, when my trainer asked if I wanted to jump her anymore, I said no.  Then I walked her around in that nice stretch for a little while more before dismounting.

After my lesson on Mariah, I got to ride Romeo.  He didn't like that new sprinkler they'd moved in, so I worked with him on that during my ride.  A lot of times I'd cut across the arena so that we were close to it, but not as close as we could get to it.  

The trick is, if a horse is scared of something, is to do circles.  So, for example, when Romeo started to shy at the sprinkler, I'd do a circle.  When we'd come around, he'd start to shy again, so you do another circle. 

And you just keep doing that.  This gives them a chance to look at the scary thing without having to force a heads-on confrontation.  Eventually, Romeo realized the thing wasn't so bad after all, and at the end of the ride I was able to walk him by it. 

In addition, I did a lot of circles and figure-8's.  Plus some trot work as well.  I really tried to focus on using my seat to steer to give both me and Romeo some practice with that. 

My trainer was riding in the outdoor with me on Twister.  The only thing she said to me was to close my fingers so Romeo couldn't lean on them, which I already knew I needed to do but just... wasn't doing it.  

So yeah, had a good ride on Mariah, and a good ride on Romeo.

Actual lesson 12/6/2022