We jumped! And got smiley faces

 And Oh MY!!!! I do NOT need to not jump for that long again. It was bad. ha ha. So bad. My arena was awesome though. :) 

Dan started off kinda lazy. We did a triple bounce, low. He kinda just basically cantered over the first one and then realized he was jumping and finally picked his legs up to jump. He didn't knock the poles, but it was awkward. Bless us. It never really got much better. ;) ha! We did it a few times and he actually started to jump but he clipped his left front heel bulb and was super lame for a minute. Ding dong! Once the sting wore off he was fine and we carried on. 

 

After we did the bounces a few times we did a low wide oxer with placing poles. The goal is to teach a horse how to properly bascule and jump up and over. I made the comment that he felt like he was jumping super big and Jacel explained that a low wide oxer makes you think it should be a flat jump, but that in reality they have to maintain the same arc as they do over a skinny jump and in order to do that, the arc has to be bigger and taller. It should maintain the same pace and height in the arc and the width instead of just jumping flatter and longer. She drew me the arc over the poles in the sand and it made so much sense. And then we were laughing because I said it was an upside down smiley face! We joked that my FB post could be "Our jump lesson was so good my trainer drew smiley faces in the sand for me" instead of "I was so bad I needed a diagram". ha ha. And man, I hate placing poles. I could not "stay" with Dan. He kept jumping me out of the tack. I finally got somewhat where I could stay with him, but damn that's hard.

 

Then we moved onto the one stride. And again, Dan was lazy. (Or somethings wrong, or he forgot how to jump and/or canter since we've been only walking and trotting for so long!... and I don't think we did too much... although I probably should have not done quite as much). The first one he basically barely got over and almost ate it on the out. Then we had a couple of rough goes through, one with a two stride. That's when Jacel was like... "okay, he's being lazy. Pop him behind your leg.. not on the shoulder". And once I did that it was fine. He jumped it like normal. We did two more good run throughs and quit with that. 

Ai yiii yiii... I am RUSTY!!! But Dan was at least jumping well over the oxer. I had my pivo on but didn't put it on follow so it just sat where it was. So I only got some video of the low wide oxer. And good grief... what on earth is my upper body doing??! Poor dude. But at least he looks good!