Stick with the commitment

For today's jump lesson on Charlie, Shannon took it up a notch and put me back in the "stretch" zone where I had to really think and work to ride what she asked. After our warm up, we started with an easy little course. Then she rearranged the fences, starting with a vertical jumped at an angle, with some sharp(er) turns. What I foresaw in my head was chaos and clutziness, but we actually rode it ok. Then she changed it again, making it a little harder, and we were a little sloppier, but still did it. Victory! And finally, she set a barrel on the ground with two "wings" and we had to jump the center of the barrel. This took three tries to get right - first I was staring at one of the wings, then I was weaving and couldn't commit to the center, and then finally got it right. She said she once had a lesson where she had to jump an upright barrel without wings!! The thing I struggled with today was making a decision and sticking with it. We started with a little fence with ground poles and rode in with the extra stride. My job was to sit there and not allow the launcher. It's Charlie's job to decide to put in the extra stride, but my job not to go ahead and launch him - it's a bad habit I need to break, especially for upper levels on cross country where it can be dangerous. My preference is almost always to launch, but that's because I've only ridden Beginner Novice where it works ok because the fences are smaller. So that was much harder to do than it is to type. To wait-wait-wait for the fence even if it felt like we were about to ride under it. Then we worked on the sharper turns and the angled vertical. Both of these were the same action by me - make a decision and stick to it. Shannon said she could see as we got closer, I'd start to second guess myself and wiggle all around and poor Charlie didn't know whether to go ahead and go or if I was actually asking for something else. Since I'm really just getting in the way that last stride, my job is to make a decision and commit to it and not mess around at the last minute. It was another fun ride on Charlie. He is an absolute delight to ride and I am enjoying every single minute of it. And anything with a spread still looks a little big to me. It will be very satisfying to look back from the future and think that spreads are easy-peasy.