Friends with Ponies

Yesterday I talked about how awesome my friends are. One of these good friends I've met in the last year (damn it feels longer) is Kate.

And Kate has PONIES and generously
gives me her belt to use as a neck strap lol

I could say a lot of really nice things about Kate, if you get the chance to meet her, do it (and also come see me too!). But one nice thing I can say about Kate is that she has ponies and is a generous human, so the second that I told her about the whole ordeal with TC, her first response was to offer me ponies (and not even in a "train my ponies!" way, since she offered to let me jump them even after the last time I jumped one I made it stop at a tiny fence because you don't need leg to jump horses, pfft). I do love me some ponies. And riding with friends! Riding Rico alone for so long, and having basically everyone at my barn vacate the arena when I'm on TC, I really love riding with friends.

This weekend the weather finally cooperated and I headed out to her barn on Saturday afternoon!

These are from summer because it was dark when we were riding

She offered me my favorite Ginger pony and we headed down to the arena. I haven't jumped regularly (like with lessons and stuff) since 2012, but as I've said on this blog, I actually have more jumping training than dressage training. I've just had higher quality (and more recent) dressage training.

We warmed up and I popped up into jumping position at the canter to try to knock some of the rust off. I felt super out of whack. Not only have I only jumped like five times in the last five years, I also hadn't RIDDEN a horse in over a month. Even just posting was a bit odd and I fudged a canter transition or several, but generally, flat work is my jam (er at least it should be). But I had a major problem with cantering in jumping position. It was kind of hilarious. And also incredibly frustrating.

Apparently when sitting, I ride just fine, but the second my butt leaves the saddle, my education leaves my body and I got rigid in my elbow, loose in my core, and had almost no stability in my leg. It was SO FRUSTRATING. Let me tell you, going from the very very top of one discipline to not being able to just fucking canter in jumping position without feeling like I was going to fall right off was really humbling. Riding is hard.

I was super wigged out by this fence lol

Kate was nice to give me a single tiny fence to warm up over before she sent me through a grid. It's been five years since I rode through a grid. I had drilled it into my head after the last time I rode Ginger over fences (this summer on xc) that I HAVE to keep my leg on. Ginger is super fun and simple to jump, but she's not a seeing eye horse where you can just take your leg off and get that deer-in-the-headlights look that I get coming to jumps these days. But I'm happy to say that I kept my leg on and most of the jumps happened!

I kept ducking and jumping ahead over the single fence. In general, that's been my major habit over the years. What, do I think I'm going to fall off the back of the horse? I've fallen on a lot more necks and over a lot more shoulders than I've fallen off the back... Still it feels comfortable to have a horse's ears up my nose and my leg way back. I'm also just not flexible at all for this sport- my hamstrings are tight and my body just feels like it won't listen to me.

Major props to Kate for dealing with me at this point- I was really frustrated by my old habits. Still, she had super good reminders and visuals for me and we slowly kicked more rust off of me, even if I felt like sometimes I was running around and grabbing the rust, slapping it back on, and complaining loudly that there was no rust on me at all.

She's the best pony

Grids are also hard. The first time we came in, Ginger ran out. You know, because I left a huge door open on the right side. Luckily I remembered that even when not in dressage tack, I know how to keep the shoulders on a horse straight, so it only happened the one time.

The grid was super fun, a one stride to a two stride. I kept letting her drift left and getting ahead again. But by the end I was miraculously able to keep it all together and even blocked another run out.

It was a humbling ride, evidence that, while I obviously still remember how to jump, I'm going to need a lot of work to get back to where I once was in my jumping. And that's hard. It sucks to go from literally competing at the highest level in one sport to struggling at a very low level in another. I wasn't expecting that (which is dumb) so it's going to take a little while to get used to re-learning (there was a lot of "I KNOW! Wait, am I not doing that? WTF?!" going on). Luckily Kate seems to have endless patience with me. Hopefully I bounce back relatively quickly jumping-wise, and obviously an attitude change has to happen too for this to be less frustrating and more fun. And that's on me.

I love ponies

I feel so freakishly lucky to have this sort of an opportunity to start jumping before I buy my next horse. I really want something that I can play with over fences and on the trails, and yah eventually, my little BN/N horse is probably going to be the only one that piaffes and passages. To jump a bit before having to buy something is not only going to give me information about whether I really DO want to do this, it's going to drastically change the sort of horse I can buy (which Kate reminded me on the phone the other day when I was contemplating trying to sell TC and taking the money to buy something else NOW). So massive thanks to Kate and the little Ginger pony for helping me! Even if I was a bit of a pain in the ass to both. Will work on that.