Clue: Our Lessons with Sheryl, 12/27/09 and 01/02/10

Here is a collection of footage from two of my lessons with Sheryl–more to come soon! 🙂 Clue is my 2003 American Quarter Horse mare. Although Clue used to jump before her injury (back in 2007), Katie’s ring has many new and exciting colors and shapes of jumps she’s not seen before. The focus of our initial lessons was to maintain forward motion when she became unsure coming to a fence. If she thought it was scary, she’d either goat leap it (I’ve included one of our more ridiculous ones in this video) or stop. She hasn’t offered up too many refusals, but they are always to a new fence that she’s unfamiliar with. She’s getting more and more confident, however, and I’m getting better at offering her the support she needs coming into a new fence. In the footage from January 2, I took a pretty wicked spill coming to a fence we’d already jumped once. You can almost see my expression change before I hit the dirt “Oh, she’s bucking a bit–whatever, I can sit this out–OH CRAP–here we go again!” When I ended up on her head, all I could think was “not the ankle again, PLEASE, not the ankle”–and I actually tried to lift my legs before I hit the ground. My shoulder took the brunt of the fall, and for three days, my right arm refused to lift beyond shoulder level. Fortunately, it didn’t hurt during my lesson, so I got back on and we continued on our way. She had a lot of extra energy that day–my fault for not making it out to exercise her more frequently that week, due to a …
Video Rating: 4 / 5