The best part of working for a university is the paid week off between Christmas and New Years. And while I had so my I should be doing this week, I’ve pretty much spent the week catching up on laziness. Honestly, Monday was spend recovering from Christmas with a migraine. Tuesday was spent recovering from Monday’s migraine and going out for sushi with my mom, and Wednesday was spent seeing Mamma Mia in Philly with husband courtesy of my mother. Somehow that took out more than half of my time off. But, the nice part of the week off was a lesson during the week during daylight hours.

lazy like a Lasagna kitty this week!

For some odd reason though, my leg wasn’t working too well. And Ranger wasn’t exactly filled with energy either thanks to a day outside in the rain. After a frustrating exercise at the trot and canter over a pole where we worked on my ability (or rather inability) to steer using my outside leg and rein we moved onto some jumping. Where I was met with a Ranger I didn’t quite know. Normally, Ranger is Ranger, but today (in the beginning) he was sort of long strided (and slow) and we canter up to our lovely inside white single jump to absolutely no spot. But, Ranger being Ranger took chip and we moved on from there. Next time, I was little more prepared and actually half halted, got him onto his hind end, and rode him to a nice spot. From there, we cantered a nice circle and cantered down over our inside grey single towards the double doors (one and only time we did this jump this direction). Slightly long spot but decent enough.

New hairnet that doesn’t induce migraines? Only time will tell. First ride a success. Will review…

From here we moved on to our the same grey single the other direction, continuing our canter around to our outside line in the holding 8. Goals here were the approaches for each line/jump (straightness) and holding for the damn 8. While if I added leg, we could easily do the 7, for some reason we were working on the 8 last week (because last week the 8 was there) and decided to keep the 8 this week. The first time through, the first jump was perfect, the second jump was nice, and then we did a 7 1/2. The second time through, I sort of screwed up and the first jump was ok-ish, but not great, the second jump pretty much sucked, but the plan was the remember to hold at 3, 4, 5,  and 6 and as a result, jump 3 was actually perfect. I can’t remember if this was it or if we did it again.

We ended with a simple course. Trotting into the small vertical at the end of the ring (last week’s crossrail) bending line to the single fence on the rail, continuing to our single inside grey jump, outside line, around to inside white jump. Other than the fact that by this point, my legs were REALLY tired (and I didn’t start with much strength to begin with) and Ranger was NOT helping me out in the corner with my simple changes or really just cantering into the corners…, the jumps themselves were decent. We could have used some pace, but today, pace was not happening. But our spots were there!

In other news, it appears our next show is a week from Sunday…