Look, Ma!

We did the thing with the reins on one hand again.

But without stirrups.

That was pretty cool.

Then, for the last two minutes, we played chase. Four adults on horseback trying to avoid getting tagged, whilst the fifth tried their best to make someone else ‘it’. Despite the long stick, I was ‘it’ forever, Rebel not keen to get too close to another horse. I knew he was like that, so not much success. But still fun, just lashing around the arena, trying to not to knock anyone over or fall off. That was pretty cool, too.

When we walked back into the indoor, the girls were bubbling, giddy, all the ones with mums and dad in my lesson were calling out, I wasn’t paying much attention as I was covering Rebel in praise, we had the best week ever, all three days, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, he was on great form, and when I got down I wondered at the high spirits.

There was a fence set up, two poles laid across, their ends in two mounting blocks on their short sides. Pretty small for that lot, I thought. Then I heard what the girls were saying.

‘We jumped with no hands!’

‘WHAT!’ I looked around trying to get somebody’s, anybody’s attention. ‘YOU DID WHAT? WHAT?’

I couldn’t get much sense out of any of them, unsurprisingly.

On the way to the bus, I groused a bit to Lorraine about that, them getting to jump with no hands. She laughingly reminded me that we had cantered with the reins in one hand without stirrups. !

Oh, yeah.

I said, ‘You know, you think you’re just going to spend your life going around and around in circles, and then you do something really cool.’

And Barbara said that next week we can race each other over the jumps. ! I’m fairly certain that does not entail all of us pelting at the fences all at once… I think. But still! Excellent!

There is still so much more to do…