Rock Star Status

The title of this post obviously refers to Limerick, who was beyond fantabulous today! I'm not gonna lie, the last time we went XC schooling, he flipped his shit when other horses got to jump before him, proceeded to refuse a starter coop with my trainer onboard, and kind of made me question whether or not I'd ever be able to handle him (this was in August, maybe 3 weeks after I got him). As you can imagine, I was nervous and went in expecting the worst, which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when everything WAY surpassed my expectations :)

We started out watching Collyn and Frankie go around the training/prelim course for at least an hour, calmly standing and filming them the whole time and taking a minute to splash in the water. Let me just say that C+F are total badasses and I want to be them someday! Limerick started out ok, though a little bit nervous and insecure when Frankie wasn't in sight, but he calmed down as soon as we turned to watch them go or walked around a little bit to get out his jitters.

Then, Limerick and Frankie trotted/raced back to the starter course, and it was our turn to have fun :) S started the lesson by having us hack around the field, doing some trot and canter work. We had to canter downhill, which made me more nervous than anything else we did, but is SO much easier when I just lean back! We moved on to jumping one starter fence at a time, slowly moving around the field and occasionally jumping the middle fence. We jumped a little log, to a brown coop, to a white coop, to a black coop, to a stone wall, to a little wood jump with three poles, to barrels, to tires! I think I got all of those in the right order...

None of them presented any real problems, though some of them elicited bigger jumps from Limerick than others. There were also a few that he tried to get his head down afterwards, and I don't really know what that was about, but I'll chalk it up to a little bit of back soreness. He's getting adjusted on either Monday or Wednesday of this week, so YAY for that! I also got to use my new cooler today, and I highly recommend it! It's a weatherbeeta and actually does what it's supposed to do, as in doesn't make Limmers sweat more!

The day could not have gone better and was such a good first experience for Limerick and me :) He got a whole bucket of Nicker Doodles and lots of love, as well as some liniment on his legs and turn out when we got home. I can't wait to go schooling again and can't thank S, E, G, and Collyn enough!

Here's the video: (sorry it's mostly unedited, I suck at iMovie..)

Some pictures:

The cooler! Kind of weird, but super effective and the first one I've ever used that doesn't cause him to get hotter

Gorgeous ending to a gorgeous and perfect day :) 

Lesson With S!

I had the most fabulous lesson EVER with S today :)!!! It was my first lesson in over a month because of France/bad timing/etc. and I was super excited to get some professional help with the problems I've had lately. We started out doing flat work and she was pretty adamant about how much she likes the three-ring for us, which is awesome because I really like it too! It's officially our jumping bit, while the boucher will be reserved for dressage. Only time will tell whether or not the three-ring will work for XC, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Anywho, S was thrilled with how much we've progressed since she last saw us (early December) and was extremely pleased with our canter work especially. We did maybe 5 minutes of trot and canter both ways on a circle, then moved on to jumping back and forth over a baby cross-rail. Limerick was good, though the teensiest bit distracted, which causes him to drift =/

However, today really drove home how important it is to ride to the jump and really get Limerick going in a forward trot. The more energy and impulsion we have, the smoother the whole thing feels and the easier it is for me to ride his jump. Then S added another cross-rail on a diagonal from the first one, which we also did without any problems, other than the drifting. Lim even landed in canter a few times and we cantered on to the next jump without any meltdowns on my part! I really do like cantering jumps and I think I'm finally starting to chill out about the idea, but when I first started, my heart pounded out of my chest and I was a giant ball of nerves.

Next, we made a course of a cross-rail -> cross-rail oxer ->  2-foot vertical -> big cross-rail -> outside line of 2 cross-rails, which went really well when I remembered not to let Limerick putter out in front of the jumps! The lesson was awesome, Limerick jumped the best he's ever jumped (thank you, Rood and Riddle), and I felt like we were really in sync with each other :) For smaller details and to watch parts of the lesson, here's the video that my awesome-possum friends took!

Finally, here are some pictures from the day: 

FAVORITE 

P.S. A special thanks to the bestie for coming to visit me this weekend, taking pictures and videos, and just generally being amazing <3