last lesson in the indoor?

Saturday was POURING out - making the mid-50s temp feel a little chillier than it really was. We're getting so close to lessons moving outdoors again... and I really doubt I'm alone in hoping this was our last lesson inside for a while.

becoming more balanced together

Riding indoors has been solid practice, tho. The tighter space and turns require more balance and precision, as almost everything is done on a 20m bend or smaller. It's also made a difference on Isabel's ability to land on the correct lead after fences. I usually lack the coordination (and in-the-moment thinking) to do this on my own, but fortunately jumping straight into walls and corners teaches the horses to think for themselves. Considering we almost NEVER landed on our left lead outdoors, I'll take the progress!

isabel has an existential moment...

Anyway, the lesson was solid. It was our first real ride since the clinic and I worked hard to build on those concepts - especially with weighting my inside leg and keeping Isabel forward forward forward. 

....points for being kinda straight?

It was kinda funny - I'd been riding so backwards lately that we were previously always getting lapped by the other horses in our lessons. Now? Not so much haha. We actually had maybe too much forward at the canter, so I had to really focus on keeping her together and not rushy. She was very good tho - aside from the occasional sassy moment...

starting to look fancy?

The jumping was pretty good too. The lines weren't measured very well tho - and I had a hard time getting the right pace. Isabel's strides can vary widely - she can do the big horse strides almost as easily as she can compress down to an itty bitty pony stride. I tend to pull for the smaller strides tho... and the indoor doesn't really have much room for truly opening up the horse's stride... so it was a tad tricky. 

locked and loaded

Aside from totally eating it out of our first line (in something like 4.25 strides... oops), we didn't have anything too ugly or clunky. 

mare loves to jump

Isabel was happy to jump from pretty much wherever I put her, with ears pricked and hunting down the next fence. I think she likes the job :)

video here

So P and I talked a little bit about planning our first event. I had originally thought we'd need to school xc again first before going anywhere... and it's not clear from current ground conditions whether schooling will be possible any time soon. 

wheeee!

But P didn't think we really needed schooling to prepare for running Elem/Baby BN (the 2'-2'3" unrecognized division we did last year) at a starter trial. Isabel is totally boss at that height and aside from that damn green roll top at our first trial, I haven't really been scared by anything we've seen at this level. I'll just need to be really careful about water and have an eye out for mud patches lol. 

'i'm ready' - isabel

So the plan is to kick the season off at the Maryland Horse Trials at Loch Moy starter trial on April 12. Super exciting!!