I fell off Arwen this weekend. Or, as I like to put it, did an involuntary dismount as I *did* land on my feet, thank you very much. Just call me Kitty Katie, as the last two times I've come off my feet somehow miraculously found the ground before my ass.
Anyway...lesson had been going really well up until that point. We were doing a lot of bending lines with a pretty complicated pole exercise, and Arwen was being fantastic. Trainer had us do a single vertical towards the barn, and then we were supposed to turn left with a fairly tight turn to a line. Well, the last time we went over the single vertical, we had turned right. So Arwen, in her wisdom, assumed we were going right after receiving pretty much no direction from me. I think my thought process went something along these lines:
"ok...approaching the jump. YESSSSS!!! Made it over the jump. What the hell am I supposed to do now...oh yea, turn left. No, Arwen, turn left now! Oh shit! SHIT! THUMP"
As you can see, it was totally my fault. I gave her absolutely no direction until about three strides away from the jump, when she was already in the process of turning right. What I *should* have done, was been looking slightly left before and over the fence, closing my hand on that left rein with my right outside leg slightly back. She is very responsive to this type of cue because hey, when I did it the next time, it was a pretty flawless left turn. But, since the first time through I pretty much did the complete opposite of what was correct, Arwen went right, I went left, then she tried to correct which threw me to the right, which caused her to jump right AGAIN, all the while steadily approaching the arena fence (hence the oh shit). Thankfully she pulled up at which point I went tumbling over her left side and somehow stayed on my feet (I think I vaguely remember grabbing around her neck, which does help swing you around a bit, lol). After a good laugh with my trainer about it (because my falls are pretty entertaining) I got back on and did it again.
By the way, I'm pretty sure Arwen's thought process went something like this:
"ok...tiny speed bump. Boring. Okay mom, did it! I'm so awesome. Now where are we going...HELLO? ANYONE UP THERE? Well...if you're not making a decision I am making the executive decision to go right. Wait...now you want left? Okay, not left, but right? Holy crap woman, make up your mind! I am going to stop and I sure hope you stop fidgeting around up there because I can only do so much to save your ass!"
She's such a good girl.
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