Well that was fun

Envision this, readers: it's Thursday night. We're headed to a schooling show on Sunday. My student has been riding consistently and well for about three years. Experience in jumping tack.... is limited. We're talking 7-9 lessons over fences.

We're jumping through down a line up the center-line, three jumps set one stride apart. Mare keeps drifting out because she's a bit green and her pilot is mostly focusing on staying with her over fences, so I go and stand on the side of the jump she drifts out over. It works for a while.

Then something goes wrong. She decides she's done jumping through this line, and hits me with her chest, but then changes her mind and decides to jump me. This sudden and Herculean effort unseats her rider, who lands squarely on top of me.

Were there lessons to be learned here? Oh, certainly. But it totally was an incident of guidance.