That's right, move off of my leg.

Sometimes you've just gotta put the leg on and keep it there. I've been getting annoyed with Baby always cutting to the inside; she has a lot of little kids ride her, so it's not really her fault, but she's just been clear about the fact that she wants to ignore my leg. Today, I took my warm-up time, and made her bend in the corners and in a circle at the walk and the trot. She fought me for the first few times, especially considering that we were the first in the ring and she had spent her entire day relaxing, but, they all give at some point, and she did (eventually).

I must say, outside of our disagreement at the start, she did exceptionally well today. She became very soft and responsive in her mouth, and she's already got a fairly soft mouth. I don't recall having any jumps into our transitions. Downward transitions weren't great, and I was surprised considering how well she's done with them our past few rides. That'll be something to focus on when I ride on Thursday. I've been paying more attention to that pendulum-like lower leg of mine. I am so close to getting it at the trot; it is almost habit! The canter is looking really nice too, but I still have to think about it.

Miss S decided that today was the day to torture me about my hands and how separate they get. Look, my left hand and my right hand are like a married couple: they hate each other and don't like to be forced to work together. Okay, maybe not a married couple, more like disagreeable office mates. Putting them together makes them practically useless for me, which I know is bad, but I just like to have independent hands.

Things got really good when we moved onto jumping. My gymnastics were almost perfect. We missed one lead, and she was a butt about breaking down and switching. For our course, I had Miss S set up a Swedish oxer because ascending oxers are gross and overrated, and that is a fact. It wasn't even a big one, maybe 2' at the ends and 2' wide. Just a little youngin Swede, but Baby was making a big deal out of it. Oddly enough, I was okay with it. I mean, it was an oxer, all wide and what not, but it was different. It was, like, half oxer, half cross bar. I think I might actually like Swedish oxe. See that? Do you see what I did there? Go read that sentence again. Now did you see it? Yes, you did. I refuse to say what you think I was going to say because I don't need you saying that I said it for my own comfort in censoring things that I am not okay with saying. If that didn't make sense, the translation would be that I refuse to give anyone the option to directly quote me as saying that I like oxe. See? I did it again. You shall not have your day.

Our first course was perfect excluding one close distance. Every lead, every jump, it was all perfect. Even her pace was slower. Unfortunately, our second course was a disaster. Missed every lead and most of the distances, but, hey, I had one good ride to be on a high from. Izz took some pictures and video taped my course, but of course she got the second one on camera. I'm still grateful. When I will get those photos is uncertain; I'm still waiting for the ones from Ms. Irwin's clinic, but at least someone is taking pictures of me.

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