Gia - session 221 - lots of confident jumps!

 I warmed Gia up with flexing and stretching at the walk and trot.  We also did a few walk/trot transitions, and several changes of bend.  She was nicely responsive to all that!

I had several jumps set up from a lesson the other night, so I pretty much left them all as they were,  but made sure that they all had ground poles to help her out.  Then I just proceeded to jump whatever looked good.  We started with a smallish X, but then moved on quickly to a vertical. I kept everything fairly low and plain, and she jumped everything nicely in stride and with lots of confidence.  She even tackled a 4-5 stride line and a 1 stride combination like they were nothing.  If anything, she took a little moment to think about the 1 stride, but I never got the idea that she was going to stop, just that she needed to assess how to work through it.  Whenever she cantered afterwards, I worked on her straightness and balance at the canter.  She was fairly equal in both directions.  When jumping, I had to focus on maintaining a correct trot tempo when she wanted to canter early, and keeping my hands down and eyes up, and sitting quietly before each jump.  I was very tempted to raise the jumps and/or add something underneath a jump, like a barrel, but I decided not to get greedy, and to just enjoy how confident she felt today!