In the swing of things

First lesson of the semester! Yay! And I got my favorite large animal, Romeo. I actually took time to look at him today and realized that he is somewhere over 17hh, but he's lanky, so that's why it works for us.

Well, it works more or less. We didn't really have any acceptance of the bit today and were lacking in forward motion, except when it came to cantering because apparently Romeo doesn't wanna canter in a group with a bunch of normal sized horses. He's a big baby. Despite being backed off and doing his best Totilas impression, we were decent today. Transitions weren't timely, but they were smooth.

Judgmental Big Baby

For the most part, I was focusing on me because I'm continuing my battle with the right collapse. It's becoming increasingly more difficult to do anything while going to the right, and the shorter stirrup required for jumping doesn't help much. I'm tempted to ask Coach S to just let me do a bunch of no stirrup work because the ability to brace against the stirrup and catch myself on the left side only aids in the weakness of the right. Plus, riding sans-stirrups actually gives me some control of the right side of the horse so I can actually, ya know, bend and yield and cue. Small circles to the left are their own special kind of hell because I barely have the ability to put weight in my right seat and support my own left side, let alone the horse's.

Photogenic Big Baby

So yeah, that's the struggle. On the plus side, the jumping is coming along better. My distances are getting more and more consistent, and I'm doing better about not coming up too soon. My biggest fault right now is my approaches which could be a little more put together because I've been a lazy butt. Perhaps if the fence was that of a Dressage ring, I'd have more success ;)