I don't care what you do, but do something!

Another jumping lesson Monday, postponed only slightly by some afternoon thunderstorms that fortunately also brought much cooler temperatures. They had moved the jumps around to mow, so the fillers we jumped the previous weeks got a bit of a hairy eyeball as we walked out to the field to graze while my friend had her lesson. Fortunately he'd mostly gotten over it by my lesson time. 

Our warm up went really well, JT was pleased with the canter he was offering. To the right, my tendency to pull was coming out. "Everything you're doing with your right rein, do that with your right leg." Then I needed to continue communicating with him with my left rein with little tiny squeezes, not just letting it be dead in his mouth because that's when he gets heavy. We worked on going between a "collected" canter and a "medium" canter. It is actually starting to be a little eerie how closely lessons with JT and DT mirror each other each week. She emphasized that collecting was not tamping down the canter. The energy should go up instead of forward in the collected canter. She discussed how his back should continue to move in the serpentine shape caused by the gait and if I started to feel stuck in my lower back it was probably because he was sticking in his lower back and I needed to do something different. If appropriate, engage that motion again by engaging my core and softly closing my leg into contact. If that didn't work, then just freaking go forward in any way, don't let the back continue to be stuck and not moving. 

Jumping we started out with a crossrail, set with square wooden poles (relevant later). After trotting that back and forth a few times, we started a course with the crossrail. We looped around from that to a bending line. Uhm. Bending is hard ya'll. I have a distinct tendency to land from a jump and then quit riding for a few strides. Kind of a celebration. So the bending lines were not ridden like bending lines, they were ridden like a jump, a party that he felt so great over the jump, a moment of oh shit there's a jump over there, and then a crooked jump without the same power from a nice canter that the previous jump had. Ugh. This theme continued throughout the lesson - my inability to sit up and ride in the first stride (or hell, even first 3-4 strides) after a jump hampered a good bit of what we did. 

After the bending line, we rolled back to the liver pool. The first time we got an unintentional flying change! It was pretty cool because he has never offered these before, but I think as we're improving the quality of the canter, he is better able to do that. Even though he gave the liver pool a side eye because of its change in location, he never questioned that we were jumping it. This led to a bit of a party on my part after the jump and we rolled through our turn in a canter towards the line of 3 bounces, cavaletti - cross rail - cavaletti, that we've done in previous weeks. Definitely supposed to trot in, so I had to circle the first time to get the trot and then re-approach. The second time I managed to bring him back to a trot sooner than 20+ strides after the liver pool and we came into it straight away. 

JT loves adding grids in the middle of courses, something I've never done before starting lessons with her, but it makes so much sense and is really, really helpful. It's a check/aid to the quality of the gaits and makes Yoshi think about his feet again, something he is a bit inclined to forget. The cavaletti in the grid were rolled to the highest option, so the first time I let him drift left and he did one of those jump, but not really over the jump. The second time I remembered I have a left leg and he went straight through. The idea of having to ride in the middle of grids is totally new to me. I (believe) I was taught to mostly just sit there and let the horse figure their feet out. This may be true at some point, but at this point, Yoshi can't do that. The bounces go much better if I think "canter depart" for each bounce and help with leg off the ground. And he won't just auto-pilot straight down the line. If there is an easier option by sliding one direction or another, he'll take it. He just doesn't know that going straight down the jumps is his job yet and bounces are really hard! She was really pleased with the relaxed and forward canter he was offering us after the jumps and warned me not to destroy it (see above).

The next course was the crossrail with square poles, a 5 stride line to a bending 5 to the liver pool, to a right hand turn to the 3 jumps of the bounce, long right hand turn to a line of 4 crossrails all at 1 stride apart, then a right hand turn again to a bigger set of 3 bounce jumps. The first time through the last set of bounces I drove him down instead of riding the gait up, and he choked over the first one. I kind of thought we might die, but JT yelled at me to keep riding and legging and he recovered some what. We turned around and came back through and it went much better. 

The second (or maybe third) time through, he knocked the crossrail. While I will take full responsibility for the bounces above and the related line below, this one was him being lazy. He proceeded to come around the turn and jump REALLY nicely over the first jump of the line. JT had told me a few lessons prior that she likes baby horses either in open fronts or naked. He actually will cut himself on the inside of his opposite fetlock if I don't wrap or boot, so I waded through the million different open front options and ordered some. While I plan on addressing the interfering he is doing with the farrier (who is out today), until then, he gets to wear all the protective gear all the time. He was rocking the new open fronts today, which made the point of picking his feet up more apparent to him when he knocked the square rail. 

Screenshot from a video, don't mind the quality. I'll share the video when I get it. 

The 5 stride line was... repeatedly awful in the same way. I kept jumping in, not committing to either 5 or 6 strides and ending up at a loooong 5. After the 3rd time of doing the exact same thing, she got a bit more sharp than she ever has been before. Now, JT is, I'm pretty sure, the world's nicest person. She corrects and fixes things while still reassuring you what a good job you're doing. It is some kind of amazing talent she has to build up confidence while still correcting mistakes all along the way. But she stopped me and told me I had to DO SOMETHING. She said she didn't care if what I did was wrong, but continuing to ride in, jump the first one nicely, then sit there and not do anything in the middle of the line and get to a really long 5 was not okay and not safe. It kinda clicked something in my head and made me commit. The next time I chased him down the line a little bit, but we got the 5 with a normal spot. He knocked it because I'd been a bit too aggressive the last 2 strides, but it was still better than before, by a long shot (haha). The second time I rode forward the first three strides then could sit up tall and ride the canter into a better canter to jump out really nicely. We ended on that. 

I love how much experience he is getting even at this low level of 2' - 2'6" (maybe??) jumps. He's jumping oxers, bounces, fill of all kinds including the liverpool and some other fun things; she really knows how to train a young horse. Today she told me that the first two lessons down there she wasn't sure about his jumping style. But now, he's becoming a much nicer horse, one that we have shaped. She said it was adorable how we could encourage him to do something bigger/better and he would then go... "well, okay, if you guys say I can, then here I go!" She and DT are both in disbelief that he actually won money as a racehorse! 

While I was hosing him off after she was asking when we could come down next. Usually I'm the one to message her about setting up a next time, so it was a bit different. We're supposed to school cross country next Wednesday, so when I looked at my calendar later and messaged her, I asked if she wanted to see us before or after cross country. She said preferably before - ah hah, so we set something up for Friday. She didn't say, but I'm wondering if my repeated riding to a long spot made her question us going out cross country. Which is 100% fair, I want him and I to be safe out there, so whatever she thinks needs to happen I will make happen. 

Today is feet and a nice walk hack around. Wednesday is a dressage lesson, Thursday we'll work on a short version of whatever we did in our lesson, and Friday is jumping with her again.