That's how it's supposed to be

Since I actually put my stirrups to a decent length today, I rode like I kind of knew what I was doing. I was on Leo today which meant I got to use the cheese grater stirrups. Why keep weight in your feet when you can just nail the iron to your boot? I'll admit it, I took advantage of the graters; Leo did one fantastic canter transition when we first started, then the rest were just me throwing my outside leg back trying to get some sort of forward motion. Outside of our usual walk, trot, canter, Miss J threw in some no stirrup work at the sitting trot. She also had us pick up our stirrups while trotting which didn't work for me.

weeeeeee

We got to do some jumping too, but it was small stuff because, apparently, at the last show—which I was not at, let the record show—everyone was barreling through the rollbacks. For that reason, turns were the focus for today. The first turn was the brick to the green, ya know, the thing that I screwed up entirely on my first IEA lesson because I ran through it while I was riding Leo? Old habits die hard. I was afraid of not getting a good spot to the brick, so I moved up and caught a long distance, which wasn't great to deal with on the other side of the fence. That turn was blown to shreds. The second time was much better, but we added a third fence, and I was ridiculously stubborn about getting the lead. Miss J told me to just commit because the first simple change didn't work. Here's a lesson kids: Don't question your trainer just cause you want something. I wanted the lead, but I couldn't get it without sacrificing proper preparation for the fence, and I had a refusal. The second time was better because I had myself established before even making the turn.

We almost got to go on a trail ride, but Christopher Robin was being used in another lesson and would've freaked out if we went out there, so we just cooled off on the rail as per trainer's orders.