OR is my personal cheerleader.  She's only seen the best of Archie (minus his post-gallop, trail-induced mania) (and his penchant for biting horses in the ass as their owners try to halter them) and calls him a saint.  I mean, he is a saint.  He saves my ass all the freaking time.  But it's a sort of laissez-faire saintdom.

We met up on Sunday, amid horrible skies and a constant threat of imminent downpour, to practice a little bit of jumping.  Safety in numbers.  We had the same course set up as we'd individually worked with on Wednesday, with only one minor change.  I turned a plain vertical into a crossrail/vertical, which I used to do in Augusta all the freaking time.  It's more of an optical illusion.

I trotted most of the fences initially, just trying to get a grasp of things.  Silly of me, since I cantered them earlier in the week.  After trotting all of them, we moved on to cantering and building little lines and courses.  We had three little blips.  A refusal, a complete knock down, and a nasty chip over the oxer.

After fucking up a "full" course of six fences, I took a moment to try to mentally get back in the game before attacking the course again.  This is where the cheerleader comes in.  Afterwards, OR told me that Archie's expression was significantly improved and that I appeared happy rather than terrified.  I was still terrified, but some part of me remembered that I have to actively ride the horse.

Only one lead change, which I think the dude nailed.