Hold On! (But Don't)

Jump lesson night and Bridget was feeling very, very fresh. It's been almost a year since the last time she bucked me off, and I held onto to that record and managed to stay in the saddle :)

Weekend ears pic to help you identify Bridget in KateRose's Between The Ears Contest. 

Since our lesson topic Included successfully riding naughty ponies, here's a couple of handy tips:

- Rearing = behind the leg. Get them forward and feeling like they're up and under you, then they don't have an opportunity to rear.

- Bucking. Likely behind the leg, could also be not accepting the leg. Too bad so sad, leg stays on and forward is helpful.

- Bucking, if you fail to stop it from happening. Keeping a solid upper body, shoulders back, weight in heels makes things easy. Counter-intuitively, rather than pulling the head up, you should slip the reins to help avoid getting pulled forward. Then make the pony go!

- Bucking upon landing from a jump (Bridget's go to when she's excited). Need to be super solid about sitting up after fences while re balancing and packaging canter under me RIGHT AWAY. Pony that is working properly and has a job has a harder time doing stunts.

Even with the antics,  we had a super lesson and I felt like there was a lot of progress made in building and keeping the jumping canter we've been looking for for so long. I'm not at all worried about the naughty behaviour - it's Bridget and so rare I don't take it too seriously. I never longe prior to riding her and she's in a tiny winter paddock with no room to really run. Even Bridget gets a little stir crazy sometimes! She still certainly got corrected for the silliness, and was a good pony for the last half of our lesson.

No tricky lines here, just a focus on a nice steady pace and timely/accurate simple changes.

Homework: More of that forward, adjustable, uphill canter that feels like it's under me at all times. She's far enough along that we can start asking her to lengthen/come back between fences as needed AND expect her to remain uphill and in balance while doing so.