Apparently I accidentally published this with no title and didn't notice for a couple days. Whoops.

In our last installment, Jazz was fresh off a great lesson.  I promised a story about a lesson which was now almost a month ago. Oops.  I'm going to go ahead and make this the last time for now that I make excuses and cite my insane schedule, blah blah blah.  From now on, I'm just gonna write about what I want to write about and get back to basics.

No farm visit pictures, so here's my cat, Casey!

I had a lesson waaaaaaay back on March 8 I want to talk about.  I arrived a little late, and didn't end up having time to lunge beforehand, the first time I had not lunged before riding since I started doing so a couple of weeks before.  Started with all the standard exercises, but the real showpiece was the canter.  Right lead was business as usual, but left lead quickly became World War III.  Jazz was having absolutely none of it, pulling on her martingale, popping mini-rears, the works.  I had so much trouble, my instructor popped a lungeline on her.  After she got a canter on the lungeline, I got back on and tried to get a canter on the line.  Jazz had a couple fits and ultimately ended up bucking me off.  She threw a couple crow hops and I ended up with my left foot out of the stirrup and over Jazz's right hip, and Jazz pretty much stopped there, so I just slid off the right side.  Luckily for me, Jazz really doesn't have much of a buck, I just consider it a side effect of the martingale (she'd rather be rearing), and she doesn't appear to want to throw me, just teeter me off balance enough that I stop pestering her.  After that episode, my trainer got on and had just as much trouble with her attitude as I was having, but eventually she did coax a left lead canter out of her.  I have to admit that I felt a little better seeing my trainer having as much trouble with my horse as I was having.

He's a very talented cat, capable of being a lump and coveting your dinner at the same time.

I had one other lesson before I went away for spring break on the 18th which went different than I expected.  I had another commitment that ran long, so I was running very late to my lesson.  Luckily my trainer is awesome, so she had my horse caught and in the barn for me when I got there.  We got her groomed and tacked quickly between the both of us, and I got to do the majority of my lesson.  We spent the bulk of my shortened lesson working on leg yields off the quarter line at the walk and trot.  It was mostly okay, but Jazz was getting lazy, especially towards the end.  Jazz likes to shut down and turn everything into a fight as soon as she decides that she's done.  I ended up getting the crop out to encourage the forward a little, and Jazz started doing little rears.  I brought her into a tight circle every time, and we eventually got a little co-operation out of her (luckily right at the time my lesson was supposed to end).  As a really great bonus to a successful lesson, my trainer even said it was the best she's seen me ride yet.