XC lessons!

We had a cross-country lesson at the barn this last weekend, and I got to ride both days. My best friend came to take some pictures on Saturday, and he got us going over the roll-top for the very first time, among other photos.

A lot of these photos of me aren't very flattering at all, but hey -- it is what it is, right? And some of them have Rev looking very green, but again, she IS green. :)

Without further ado:

This was a little warm-up canter exercise -- canter this pole, then sharp turn (right, in this case) to canter a second pole. The trick was to get straight on both poles, centered on both poles, and get the number of strides MT asked for. In this case, we're about to get the five strides he asked for.



Then we moved into the field to jump some cross-rails and some real xc jumps. We need work on jumping downhill:



Uphill, she jumps fine, even though this is just about too small to bother with:



When we went to jump the double log jump backwards, Rev tried to duck out left -- I held her in pretty well, and she ended up jumping the left corner of the fence and veering off left ... but I stayed on:





She jumped it every time afterward, especially when my position is screaming JUMP IT DAMMIT like it is here (except for losing the contact in front of the fence; now I know what I need to be aware of!):



And then we moved on to the rolltop! This is the first time we'd jumped it, and I was starting to really fatigue at that point, so I didn't get her set up as well as I could. So she got awfully close, and she hung her knees -- I swear it looked better the next several times and on Sunday! Here's her being strong like ox (just LOOK at those strong quarters and hind legs!!), but hanging her knees:





Lots of fun, and we did a lot better on Sunday, even though there aren't any pictures. We jumped the rolltop like it was nothing, and we jumped a new-to-us and bigger-for-us log jump, too. :) Rev's a good little jumper!