So close yet so far

I guess it's a good thing that I rude with the people who I ride with, Cas in particular. She has to jump higher than the rest of us because of the classes she does at shows. I've been waiting for the day when I can innocently tag along behind her and try the bigger jumps—though I am overly pleased with how Baby has done in the last 6 months—mainly for the heck of it. Tuesday was that day, but since flatwork always precedes jumping, you'll have to read all that before getting to the "good stuff".

I'm still in the process of breaking I'm my tall boots, so I rode in them for my lesson. They're so much easier to get on now that they've been through one weekend of showing, but still they could use a bit more stretch, mainly because of my awkwardly large calves. Flatwork was the usual walk, trot, and canter. My departures for the canter need a bit more work though. Baby it's still being more disagreeable than usual about her left lead. I'm going to have Miss S call out the chiropractor to see if there is anything wrong physically or if she's just voicing an opinion. Another thing to work on I'd my shoulders when I canter. Apparently I do a "thing" with my arms where I don't move them, but I move my upper body instead. I can feel it, but I have no idea how to fix it. I only do it when I sit the canter; it's not an issue anywhere else. I'm planning on going to some Dressage clinics in the fall. Perhaps one clinician will know something to help me out, I'm not sure, I guess we'll see.

And now onto the "good part". Jumping was basically rollback mania. Everyone just decided that rollbacks were the best thing on Earth. I'm on the fence with rollbacks. They're okay. They're certainly fun, but I don't like doing four of them in a row, plus you have the lead to worry about, not to mention you still have to two-point and all that nonsense. They're a good challenge, but they become annoying when you have to do them too much.

I threw two in my first course. They were simple ones, although I took my turn too tight for the second one. We chipped in to the second fence and sliced it—LOL #jumperswag—but we got over and finished with the triple.

After we all did one course, Miss S raised the jumps and put up two oxers. The rollback trend was still going hard. I switched mine up and decided to do a rollback with three jumps, then do a rather large oxer that Miss S had put up, claiming it was 2'6" when it was clearly not 2'6". The rollback made a cute little "S" shape too. It was a nice course, and Baby went through it very well minus a few missed leads. I got her too close to the oxer, but thank God she is careful with her feet. She cleared it, knees up and neck stretched. I looked atrocious, but at least half the picture was pretty.

I made a .gif  :)
I was fairly proud that I had jumped 2'9", so I wanted to take a picture of the measuring tape to send to Fifi and Schmitty. I went out there with the tape, put it against the jump, and guess what it measured? 2'8" and a quarter. 2'8" was bad enough, but then that little extra quarter inch was laughing a little maniacal laugh at me; it added insult to injury, but I was honestly proud. She took the extra stride that I asked for and got over that jump almost effortlessly. Her talent never ceases to amaze me, and we didn't have any refusals, despite some odd distances.

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