The pictures are lovely!
Honeysuga, the 'brown pony' is very nice! Love the long ears as well!
Sarandra, that is a really cute picture of you guy!
Today was rainy and very windy. I had set up for a riding lesson and I couldn't move it to a different day because I am on a tight schedule right now with everything building up before I leave for BC. I really wanted another riding lesson before I leave so my instructor and I braved the rain and wind for an amazing jumping lesson!
My first time ever in an english saddle and first time to try my hand at jumping properly.
The saddle felt a little weird when I first got on, but after a couple circles at the walk and then onto a trot, I forgot it was different. In fact I liked it a lot more than western or australian. Much more room to move.
We worked on my trotting for a bit, getting the mare to move out into a bigger trot for posting can be exhausting. LOL! I did get her there! Then we switched directions and did it all again, and worked on posting with the correct diagonals. I always post to the left front, so I have to work on posting to the right front when going to the right.
After cantering a bit, we worked on two-point. When C (my riding instructor) thought I had that good enough she set up a very small cross rail and had me do a trot approach, jump, canter depart. We did this both ways, and also slipped in a canter approach, jump, and canter depart from each direction.
C set the cross rails up a bit higher (1 1/2 feet maybe) and then had me go over it a couple times each way. I stayed with a trot approach on that height though.
She took a little video of my last jump. It felt really good, and I actually don't look all that bad. You know when you have this mental image of yourself riding and how you must look? (I'm a little overweight so I imagine myself looking much larger than I actually do when riding)
This lesson she did a lot of 'fast-forwarding', hence the canter approach in my first jumping lesson. She wanted me to get a good feel for the basics of jumping, since this was my last lesson (for a while anyways) she just touched on a lot of things.
One thing I have been very happy to learn from her, is that I have very good balance and a good seat. Those are things I thought I needed to work on. I guess all the bareback riding I did helped me more than I thought.
I can't figure out how to post a video from FB to here. (I don't think I'm allowed to post a FB link) If you would like to see the video, just add me on FB. My name is Lydia Holter, just send me a note saying who you are.
Either that, or maybe someone can tell me how to add the video to here. It's all of 7 seconds long, but I love it!
If you couldn't tell, I am very excited about this lesson! Also very excited to have tried jumping and liked it! (My fear was to try it and find I didn't like it.)