Long Time Coming

My last jump was nearly 3 years ago.

3 years ago was when the wheels really fell off with Pongo and I moved barns right before my wedding (right after breaking my butt).

We decided to focus on dressage and get him feeling better.  It worked a little bit.  He certainly made huge leaps in his flatwork over the next couple of years with our amazing trainer as we went from cross training to focusing on just one discipline (MUCH to be said for picking one thing and getting really good at it).

But something was always missing.

I really missed jumping.

After Pongo passed I tried reasonably hard not to miss riding.  And with the baby, move, work...I certainly have had my hands full.

But I can't help it, I miss it.  The only way I can swing it right now though is to only kinda do it.

I can't own a horse right now, can't drive super far to a barn, can't spend hours at the barn once I am there.

Luckily there's an incredible new facility TEN minutes from my house.  I connected with one of the trainers there who had a cool bio and totally understood me from the moment we hopped on the phone.  And today...I had my first jump lesson in three years...and it was awesome!

I rode her horse, a big, floaty OTTB about 10 months off the track.  He felt like he had many more months of training on him which to me spoke volumes about the trainer I was working with.  She was easy, breezy, let me hop on, figure him out and then off we went over some jumps.

I was a hot mess the first couple...chucking my body over them.  The trainer put up a grid and let me figure my stuff out.  She was rad.

Three things happened specifically over the course of the lesson....

1.  I started to ride the horse vs. just ninnying around trying not to upset him because SCARY OTTB might decide to race off with me, right?  Or not, his favorite gait was clearly HALT and rest with ample scritches ;)

2.  We popped on draw reins to minimize some drama llamaing that was going on because OTTB figured out I could ride and then proceeded to test me a little over the jumps.

3.  The last jump went up to an oxer which helped me and OTTB put our game faces on and do this thing.

Awesome awesome morning back in the tack.  I'm doing it again on Wednesday.