Monday, September 12, 2011

Violet's Wonderful Course

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I am writing this entry on Saturday, May 28th, and I am very happy to write that it's been an amazing week of riding.  Here's a photo from a few weeks ago of Violet's first bath and some video from a few weeks ago as well of her jumping a "control" session.  This week, we had a teeny breakthrough.  On Thursday, Stacey had set up an 11 fence course with a 3 bounce to a three stride crossrail to a cavaletti in our scary gate corner to a turn to a diagonal to a turn to an outside line with a line with two strides and then a single stride and then a turn to a diagonal and then a bending line to close.  It was a FUN course.  And for whatever reason, Violet and I were in sync and she was soft and I was soft and we just kept feeling each other out.  And so our jumping was soft and lovely.  I don't know what I was most proud about -- maintaining a nice speed through the whole course, catching most of our leads and quietly changing the ones we didn't, taking the cavaletti in the corner at a canter and then continuing to canter or tweaking our speed in the final bending line.  It was all just so relaxed and fluid -- which is a big deal for us!!