pictures 'n' ponies

I'm 5'2"ish

. He's a cutie pony, I really like riding that size haha.

TL;DR coming up, scroll past the text for pictures of pretty pony horse

Tuesday before last I had an....interesting lesson. It was finally cool that day, in the 70s, so how'd we celebrate? Putting up the jumps and having me beat up the pony after his week of being used for day camp, durrrr! I have a slight (er, big) seeing-turns issue, so we did an exercise where we cantered to a single somewhere btwn the midline and the far quarterline on the left lead, straight line halt, turn right and trot an outside line going to the right. After we got that down, we did a little skinny on an angle, and trainer was like, K, now come around to your outside line (the other outside line). I was like, whaaaaaat?! because those jumps were still up from the last person who'd lesson and they were like a legit 2'9" vertical-to-an-oxer, which is certainly not big in the real world, but is definitely higher than I've jumped in the past 2 years or so.

Obviously, the combination of me leaning way forward and the pony not having done much work the week before, as well as not having jumped that big in who knows how long meant we did not go over those jumps the first time. Or, ya know, like the 6th time either. So, after trainer put the first jump back down to a baby vert, took the back rail off the 2nd, made me dig my left spur into him because that's the side he kept running out to, gave me the you-have-to-get-mad talk, told me she knew I was freaked out about the jump height and that's why she hadn't pressed it til now, gave me a stick and made me whack him with it like 4653839 times, and said "one more try and then I'll get on and fix it," we FINALLY got over it, and it felt great! No pics of that time, unfortunately. Did it a few times until I felt exhausted; the last time through he evn did it in the right number of horse strides lol. Did the little "ooh that was fun" buck after the line too.

So then I went away the following weekend, had to work this past Tues, and finally rode again Saturday. First thing trainer says to me when I got there was, "OK, you're riding Cooper today." Cooper is trainer's nice horse, a real horse (Dutch WB) as opposed to lesson horse. I have been dyyyyying to ride this horse. He is GORGEOUS. And really big, esp compared to little Splishy the hony. Warmup was good, Cooper has the most ginormous trot and I felt like a little kid learning to post all over again. Now I know why everyone who rides him always makes him do a little joggier trot than normal; it's because his real one is so damn bouncy! I hadn't cantered him yet but trainer came out and we started jumping. Issues of the lesson: turning, obvs. He has a much bigger "turning radius" than the pony, and so we had some issues getting a straight line to the jumps (x, 2 strides to vert, 1 stride to other vert), but got there eventually. Since his canter is so big, he barely has to step over the jumps, and so I'd get all ahead again. Reason #251719 I love my trainer: after the first couple times through the line she was like "I know you're all worked up about riding Cooper, I knew you would be. You're not going to mess him up, and you're not going to look stupid. Just relax and have fun." That's pretty much the sum of all my issues, haha. And then it clicked, and it was awesome, and he has this beautiful floaty canter, and I finally was able to just chill and let him jump up to me. So then we added another outside line after the first, and had a few issues with the turn all over again, but not as bad as the first one.

Pictures!