Up and at 'em! 8:00 am show jumping with Peter!

Late to bed early to rise!  Not sure what but there is something wrong with that statement.  Tuesday morning I awoke ready for the day ahead.  Fed Steady, fed myself got ready and headed out for my lesson.  I rode with 4 other ladies which made it a bit crowded but we were in the large out door arena.  We spent alot of time in the show jumping lesson doing grids.  Come to think of it, it was all grids.  But it was good and what we all needed.  We are in Starter division and so that is where we needed to focus.  Though the grids got bigger and higher = fun!  Steady started to get really unbalanced and on the turn to the fences fall very badly through his right shoulder.  So we worked alot on this issue.  When I cam from the right it was much better and was finally told by Peter to just come from that side.  We focused on position, position, position.  And rythm vs. speed.  He explained that we need not help our horses "find a spot"  that we need to have a consistent rythm leading to a jump and let the horse find "the spot".  Then we "look up, kick up and stand up".  Ride balanced to the next jump and repeat.






One break through I had was at one point I was working on Steady to make a balanced turn and Peter yells "turn your body!"  As soon as I turned my body I felt Steady turn under me.  I had no idea that when I was asking him to turn I had my body turning in the opposite direction in turn throwing his balance off. 




He also got on to us for not improving the lead we were on.  I think we were all focused on the fact that if the horse was on the 'incorrect' lead that we would just kind of let it fall apart.  But that horses will natrually counter canter as along as they are balanced.  So he was persistent to tell us to improve the canter we were in.


He concentrated so much on explaining horse antomy and natural balance and it was by far a huge educating experience.  That if a horse needs to be counter bent to feel balanced then counter bend him.  Always keep your horse balanced and never take any jump unbalanced.


He told me that I need to ride Steady in a martingale and he needs his mouth strapped shut.  Then explained very clearly why his mouth needed to be strapped shut.  I was under a huge misperception of drop nosebands, flashes and figure eights(though Peter DOES NOT like figure eights).  Come to find out that my noseband is a drop, LOL.  He explained the huge amount of leverage there is in a horses mouth because of the long 18" jaw.  Then he showed us how painful it is to yank around on your jaw if your mouth is open then had us try it with our mouth shut.  No pain!  Thanks Peter!  Steady thanks you too!  I have alot of this lesson on my helmet cam but it will take some time to get videos uploaded so be patient with me.  Next ride 1:00 pm.