It's easy, there's a trick to it

I am pleased to report that Cappi did not have a jumping fit about boogers in the woods during last night's dressage lesson. He did, however, strongly object to being told to stay on one side of the ring, doing spirals at the trot, while the rest of the horses stayed on the other side of the ring. After his initial arguments met with failure but seemed likely to be repeated on appeal, Pat put up some low poles to remind him of where to work. Confident that he would get the message, what with seat and leg and rein and fences, we began again, Pat coaching from the center and me riding from the top.

Which is approximately when we all learned that (a) Cappi loves to jump, (b) Cappi is quite good at jumping, and (c) Cappi believes that the safest place to end up is about 2 inches from the butt of the barn's most ill-tempered horse, whither he will run at speed. Sweetie, you're supposed to be smarter than poor young Edmund; chasing death at Grayson's heels with a shell-shocked rider on your back is no way to go about proving that the years have made you wiser.

On the plus side, I'm told that I looked less spastic than might have been expected, given that I don't do much jump work. It turns out that Pat really has improved my seat; now we've just got to work on learning to control the horse.