Three Times' A Charm - Part 2

Or not.

I could've called this post many things. I could've called it Epic Fail, or Think, or many other things. But I assumed that you'd want another Three Times' A Charm post. Was I correct? I sure hope so.

Are you itching to hear about my ride yet? I guess I could explain.

Monday, Claire's mom picked us up from school. My mom met us there to get my new breeches and boots to ride in. I texted Erica and asked if I could stay after and ride Sonny after Tarzan. She said yes, and I was in a very good mood, since Annika couldn't make it.... For the third time. That's why this post is Three Times' A Charm... Because Annika couldn't make it for the third week in a row.

We got to the barn around 3:40 pm, and Claire and I went to catch our ponies. Tarzan tried to pull the whole run-away-from-Gabby trick again, but quickly changed his mind when i crinkled the peppermint wrapper. =P It was quite muddy out in the field, and Pete splashed Claire with mud more than once.

When we got into the barn, I literally skimmed over Tarzan with a brush and threw his tack (no martingale... Again). I grabbed my helmet and headed out to the outdoor arena to see if it was rideable after all the rain we'd gotten.

Eeeeeewwww. That's all I can say about the outdoor arena on Monday after all of that rain. All I heard was squish, squish, squish. The mud under Tarzan's hooves made that noise and made me shiver. It was such a weird sound. Blehhhh.

So, after discovering the disgusting condition of the outdoor arena, Erica let me into the indoor arena so that I could ride with Claire. I go trotting some. I figured out that I need to force myself to stop working on our (now beautiful) trot and work, work, work on our slowing our canter and speeding up our walk. Sounds weird, I know. But that's exactly what we need to do.

Claire learned her diagionals!! Yess! That means that she's one step closer to a canter! =D

Tarzan and I cantered once his good way... and then about a million times his bad way. At first I was too stiff and I wasn't thinking, and then Tarzan was way way way too fast and we had to work on that. But in the end, we got maybe two great canters going Tarzan's bad way. It was brilliant!!

After I put Tarzan away, I went and got April and Erica went to get Sonny, so that we could jump. I got April, set up jumps, and was halfway through brushing April by the time Erica got back up on Sonny. Yes, Erica rode Sonny up from the field. He did alright, actually.

When we started jumping, everythig was fine. My mind was drifting a bit; that was a bad sign. By the time we tried to go over one jump, switch leads, turn the corner, go over the second jump, switch leads, and do a courtesy circle, I was totally unfocused.


I couldn't get the lead changes, and went over that jump combination about 50 times. I still couldn't get it, so I let Erica jump Sonny, and then tried one more time before giving up. And guess what? On that final attempt, I NAILED IT! Yay!

That just goes to show that three times' a charm - sometimes. ;)