Liverpools and cones and trees, Oh My!

Ben and Goggles went to JT's on Friday for lessons. They both much prefer travelling with a friend in the trailer. Goggles still took a minute to load, but once on he stayed on instead of doing the hokey pokey. 

Goggles went first when we got there. Before JT came out, we spent a while walking over spanish moss clumps and sticks because he's pretty concerned about those things. He really didn't care at all until the early fall when we taught him about cavaletti and small jumps and all of a sudden everything on the ground required a lot of thought. We're getting back to the point of being casual about those things though. 

My view most of the time while "hacking" 

When JT came out, we spent a while walking loops between the standards and her small round liverpool. He is extremely suspicious of the liverpools, but each time makes progress. This time he allllmooost touched it. Then we did a forced sniff of the jumps we were going to jump - traffic cones, Christmas tree, unicorns. He thought the tree was a bit suspect when the branches moved when the wind blew. We started jumping, focusing on doing after the jump. JT purposely put us over the crossrail headed towards the fence so I had to make a decision and a turn after. 

Then we added in the spookier jumps. The first time over the tree he thought about not, but was pretty easy to direct over it instead. We strung a few together and he was SO good. He was still screwing around after the jumps, especially if he'd made a big effort over it. I was trying so hard to give him a good release, but then needed to be quicker in the 2-3 strides after the fence getting my butt back in the saddle. JT instructed me to SIT DOWN and I whined back that I couldn't when he was yanking down that hard. She said the solution is to get my butt down before he starts playing. Ah, I do see.