...Well it's been a while!!

Hey everyone! I've been around. (; So anyways. So so much has happened! Sasha has been so perfect at shows lately, and we've moved up to 2'6". I've jumped her up to 3'6" in my lessons a few times, and she jumps it so effortlessly! She just canters to it, hops over, canters away without a second thought. I've ridden her with no hands: literally just dropped the reins and steered with my seat and legs. She has been amazing. I was reading through all my old blogs a while ago, and it's amazing how far we've come. This is the horse I was scared to trot and canter on my own, and here we are, cantering with no hands and jumping stirrupless (oh yeah, jumped stirrupless the other week.)


Here in New York, we have already had snow, and she's been wearing her light/midweight blanket. Yeah. I'm not sure if anyone's noticed, but it's barely November. She's already worn a midweight.


She was a little fresh last week, but I was really really busy and couldn't ride her a lot. =/ So I feel bad. I have a show Sunday at Skidmore College, last one of the year! The official "finals" (Eq only) were the other weekend. She was awful my first round; tense, running through my hand, not responsive to any aids, etc.  She got swapped into her full cheek after being in a single jointed eggbutt for a while, and we shortened her martingale a hole. She responded a lot better, and I won the round. Then there was the "classic" round. I got a first round score of 75.5 and I was in the lead until the last person who got a 76. Yep. Well they decided to test. Sasha completely missed a change, which she has NEVER done, and then she wouldn't stop when I asked her to, which dropped us from 2nd to 3rd. I was really mad. >=( Then the person in front of us in the victory gallop wouldn't go faster than a lazy canter, and I wanted to go, but couldn't.


So yeah. She was perfect in my lesson last week -- shocking, because it was on a Wednesday and she hadn't been ridden since the show Sunday. We did a line because that was all that was set up in the arena, and then did a rollback to the second jump, which was 3'. She practically stepped over it. We did the same thing Saturday, but it was barely 2' because I was riding with my friends who have very green horses. She was really strong, but it was (hardly) kept under control.


My life, ttyl <3