Jump with Christa

We had a lesson with Christa tonight, which I was late for because I-5 was closed and it took 40 minutes to go the six miles on the arterial roads down to the next exit.
THEN I needed John to help me put on Duke's new breastplate, which wasn't quite set up right, so thank god for John to help me put it together and adjust it on Duke to make sure it fit.
THEN we got to ride.  He started us on trot and canter circles, then we jumped a cross rail (right lead), switched to left over it, jumped a vertical, switched to right, etc.  John gradually raised these, and we actually did really well spacing ourselves it, which was the most amazing part to me.  As John started to raise them, Duke started to drift left, until eventually we knocked one down and messed up the flow.  We had a few where we came in on just exactly the right spacing, and those felt great, but I had a hard time when it was off, to get him back to the right place with a half halt.  Instead, we'd leap long over it, or he'd drift left (to give himself more space?).
From there, John had us take turns.  I started, and he yelled the fences as I got close, instead of telling them all ahead of time.  We did the same two verticals, added an oxer, and then added a narrow oxer to narrow vertical 3-stride (but long three) line.  We took turns on these a few times, and our third round, Duke got what I thought was a little grabby and downhill, but John thought was just him taking hold of the bit, not necessarily going downhill.  Duke did a really nice job trying to keep his feet clear, and John pointed out to Christa that they didn't get a single rail, so he thinks at the shows, she's holding her hands (and body) tense and it's transmitting to Freebie.
Duke was really glad to jump, and then really sweet afterwards, so I think John is right, he got sour from all that dressage when he kept pulling his shoes and I was messing around with the arena footing.
This weekend is Tulip, so we'll see how excited he is - hopefully not too excited - being out in the cross country course.