Wherein I eat dirt

6:00 AM lesson today. Yeah. Six. In the morning. Another check in the "eventers are crazy" column.

J.D. in my barn was getting the early lesson in lieu of an evening lesson, and in a moment of desperation I agreed to join. Oh, what a girl will do for some riding instruction!

It was actually quite nice. It was dark when I arrived and we started off with the arena lights on, but it brightened up quite a bit and we got to jump around. Hemie was fabulous. It's been several weeks since we had a jump lesson and he was really happy. We worked mostly on the landings - ensuring we land straight and ride forward after the jump, at the same pace/speed as before the jump (no running off!). Inside the lines we worked on fixing issues soon after the 1st jump rather than at the base of the 2nd jump, and I think we did a good job of that. Issues being speed and crookedness.

Laurie's dog, Zen, was there helping out. She and Hemie are good friends and he does a great job of ignoring her during rides. But today she got a little too zealous in her attempt to "help" - she ran straight in front of us from the side just as we were coming to a gate jump. Hemie jumped over the dog and over the jump, and I came tumbling off on the landing, face down in the dirt, landing mostly on my left forearm. Note to self: eyes up! Even though he jumped crooked, I'm fairly positive that if I had just kept my eyes up and ignored the dog I thought for sure we were about to trample, I may have stayed on. Oh well. I got back on, Hemie recovered well, and we got over the jump successfully, without Zen's assistance. So far I'm not feeling too sore, but we'll see tomorrow...

So according to old folk legend Hemie is now officially mine, as I have fallen off of him 3 times:
1. Back in May, at one of our first lessons.
2. At our First Show in July.
3. This morning.

Woot.