An unexpected schooling

Moving.  Moving sucks.  Packing sucks.  Packing all the things sucks.  Trying to go through crap that you don't use because it is SO's and he isn't here to pack his crap sucks.  Most of my riding time has been eaten up with packing/sorting and it just isn't fun.  As a result, my mind has been revolting and has found every single damn opportunity to distract me from packing.  Watch the last season of LOST (the best TV show ever, thank you very much)?  Sure!  Go to the movies with a friend?  Sure! Go to the lake with in-laws?  Why not?  Take an impromptu trip to go XC schooling?  Hell yes!  Guess how much packing was done? :)

On Wednesday, a FB friend made a comment that they were going to the venue that Mia had the 3 stops at during our first Horse Trial in case anyone was interested in joining.  An opportunity to go back and make sure we don't have these issues again? Why not!  K and I loaded up Sunday morning and hauled the 1.5 hour trip, met the friend and hopped on.  Mia was pulling her OMG I can't even horse!  Shying at anything, inability to go straight, looking at everything.  It is better than it used to be, I think even more exposure will help.  Since we were in a great big field, I just pushed her forward into a gallop and let her burn off some nervous energy before popping over a set of barrels.  She eyeballed it but went over.  We then went around to the log of jump 4 of the first Horse Trial and sent over it to the barrels, she eyeballed the jump 4 pretty hard before going over it and didn't care about the barrels.  Really mare?  You are thinking of stopping over a log?  Ah baby horses.

We played with going up and down banks and even tried the Training bank, jumping up a 3 foot bank, going 2 strides and then hopping over a 12 inch log to a 3 foot drop.  Mia was pretty unsure about the drop and I almost came off by jumping ahead of her, for the second time ever, however, she saved my butt and went down the jump.  Good mare!  The second time we attempted it I had to really convince her to go down with some smacks so after she did it, I let it be.  No sense in making a big deal out of it at this point in the day, that is training level!  We put together a course and Mia was mostly great.  She jumped everything we went at (including the scary intimidating jump from last year's HT) until we made a 90 degree turn.  She was really fighting me on speed and didn't see the jump until the last moment.  We went over ugly, with her hanging her legs, and landed with me not having reins anymore but I stayed on.  Mia is not good with surprises lol!

From there we played in the water, to which Mia was amazing with.  Absolutely no hesitation to canter into the water that she hadn't seen since spring AND we jumped out of the water via the Novice level log.  Easy peasy.  We went over to ditches (I hate ditches, have I mentioned that?) and I schooled over the BN ditch before moving over to the Novice ditch.  Mia was having none of it and I pictured myself falling off.  Again.  However after watching the friend go over it, she decided it was no big deal.  No big deal enough that she didn't care about any of the other ditches we went over.  AND we went over the Novice ditch to a training level log 2 strides away and she went over it amazingly.  Love this horse sometimes!!

We finished up with another course which was uneventful.  She cantered up, she jumped, she rode away, sometimes trying to take off, other times not.  The friend noticed that Mia puts her head down after jumps, I am not sure if she believes me that Mia is GREAT compared to how she was at the beginning of the year.  Mia hasn't been putting her head to the ground at all and only tried to put her head down on landing once the entire day.  Training win!

Overall it was a good day with no real issues.  I need to be taller and not get ahead of myself when jumping Mia.  I need to wait more, especially over ditches and down banks.  Thankfully my two point was on par and while my legs are tight today, they are not sore.  And as a result of taking more fun time, I got exactly two boxes packed yesterday.  Oops.