2022 Riding Journey

#42 Key-Hole Jumping with Mariah

For this lesson, I got to pick my lesson horse.  Riggs wasn't available, she was for James to ride.  

When my trainer told me I could pick, she said something along the lines of "For your lesson, you can choose from any of the broke horses."  She said she felt she always needed to add the qualification of 'broke', because if she asked little kids what horse they wanted to ride, they'd say "Yucca!"  or "Faye!"  (I assume Faye is the red roan filly.)  Obviously they can't ride those unbroke and young horses XD 

(Broke means a horse that let a person ride them without bucking or anything like that.) 

I seriously considered choosing Rugar for my lesson.  I've never ridden him in the roughly three years my trainer has owned him.  But I'm pretty sure that if I'd picked him, my trainer would have let me ride him.  (Rugar is a light bay thoroughbred.) 

But I chose Mariah because I was familiar with her and knew what to expect.

Mariah was grumpy today. When I started brushing her off, she came around with her head to me, and then tried out nipping my sleeve / wrist. I mildly slapped her on the side of her cheek and she didn't try it again.

That should have warned me, though. When I went to pick out her hooves and turned my back to her, I knew she had turned her head to me again. I should've known what she was going to do from before, but nope, I let myself get nipped and it was a sharp nip too.

But I didn't hesitate. I swung around like lightening with the full intent to slap her good. Mariah was like "Oh shoot I messed up" and backed up till she hit the end of the lead rope. Thus, I didn't actually make any hard contact with her, but the message was clear, I wasn't going to play around.

My trainer was right there and saw the whole thing. She was perfectly fine with it and really liked the fact that I wasn't going to let Mariah get away with that. She said something along the lines of "The look on her face when you turned around and she realized you knew what's up-!" Apparently, the day before someone who'd never ridden Mariah had their first lesson her, and didn't know 'what's up', so I just had to remind her that she can throw us dagger looks but she can't nip us.

Other than that, it was the usual Mariah who pins her ears and bites at the fence when you're tacking her up. We know she's not in any physical pain, it's just her nature to be that way, especially if she's not corrected for it.

Anyhow, I got her tacked up. James came for his lesson, as I mentioned, but not Vivie. Trainer told me I could start warming her up out there, and then asked me if I wanted to jump her. My reply wasn't too convincing; I just said "I guess" in a nonchalant tone.

See, I knew I had some stuff to work on when it came to jumping, and I did want to work on that. But, at the same time, with it being Mariah and all that, I wasn't too keen to. So I was very much on the fence about it.

Trainer told me I didn't have to jump her and that she was giving me the choice. But of course, if we were going to jump or not would affect how we did our warm up.

So, I went out and fiddled with my stirrups. They'd been unrolled, so it messed everything up. Even at the very last hole, they were dressage length for me, though I didn't realize that fully until after I mounted.

Soon after I got on, James came out to the back as well with my trainer. Trainer brought Yucca, the two year old colt, out for her to work with as well.

Our walk warm up was literally one lap around the arena. I did think about doing some sort of exercise, but just... didn't, lol.

Next the outdoor arena, there's a huge farm field. Well, they've moved in an irrigator right next the north short side of the arena, with plastic arms that sway in the wind and scare horses. Somehow, it didn't register with me that hadn't been there last week, and thus I would've been totally unprepared if Mariah had taken fright at it. But Mariah was totally chill with it, didn't even bat an eye going past it, thankfully.