Jumping Fool

Dee is so utterly brilliant. We had our second ever jump lesson with Nancy today, and you would have thought the mare has been doing this her entire life. Today's exercise was a little grid. We started out simple, with just one pole. Dee locked onto the pole and actually JUMPED over it. Next it was half of a cross-rail. No issues there. Next was the full cross-rail, and she just quietly popped over that going both ways. So, Nancy set up a pole 18' from the cross-rail. We figured that might back her off or make her a little nervous. NOPE. She locked onto the cross-rail, jumped it, BALANCED HERSELF and cantered the pole. BIG pats for that. Then the pole turned into a cross-rail. We thought that this would SURELY make her hesitant. Wrong again! She once again trotted the first cross-rail, landed, took a canter stride and jumped the second. No big deal. So THEN Nancy made the second fence a little oxer, with one side of it down. I don't think Dee even noticed. So then we put the back rail of the oxer up completely. Now... this is really when you would expect a baby to go 'whoa, this is weird'. Not my mare. She jumped the cross-rail, balanced and jumped the oxer beautifully. So then nancy had me go around and jump the blue box. I jumped up her neck a little bit at it, but Dee saved me and jumped it nicely anyway. Then we went around to the other blue box, which had a very short approach out of the corner. Now... steering isn't always our forte. I tend to lose either the shoulder, haunches or both when we have a tight turn, and that did happen, but as soon as she saw that there was a jump, she straightened out and just got to it. She jumped it brilliantly. I honestly cannot believe how amazing this horse is. She didn't put a foot wrong and acted like she's been doing this her whole life. It was like she said 'well, you taught me how to do this last week, so now I know all the answers.' She is brave, clever, and a lovely jumper, which means I'm a very happy camper! I honestly CAN'T wait for next week. If we continue along this way, we'll be eventing in no time at all!
Now, as promised, here's a picture from Rachael's visit. Not very good, but oh well.