Stress-is-enhancing

I had a somewhat brain breaking lesson three weeks ago. As it goes with young horses, most of the time we're focused on him. But I had this charming new habit of jumping up his neck the stride before the fence. It is definitely made worse by trotting fences, but he definitely needs to be trotting fences right now. 

First we worked to separate my arms (hands) from my body. Even standing there pushing my hands forward without tipping my shoulders was hard and gave me a somewhat disconnected feeling. I told JT "I can't actually touch his neck without putting my shoulders forward" and she countered with the idea that as he leaves the ground the shoulders and neck will come up to me and give me the crest to push my hands into. So we practiced that for a few fences, working on the same exercise that we did the week before. She had initially said she wanted to get back to playing with the related 5 to 1, but then altered that once she saw what crimes I was committing with my position. I'll be honest, the hands are HARD for me. It was HARD to separate my hands from my torso. Eventually I seemed to get it a bit better, keeping my shoulders TALL and my hands TO THE JUMP. 

Then we worked on STAYING there through his landing. If I thought about watching the hunter pros finish jumps it worked out okay. Pressing my hands into his crest until I was positive he had landed, and THEN sitting down and telling him his job. Better a stride too late than a split second too early. 

Once we had re-established shoulders TALL to the jump, I got the direction to allow my belly button down a bit over the jump (ie folding). But better to NOT do that and have soft hands and be a bit left behind than fling myself up his neck way before he takes off. 

Goggles was actually being very nonchalant about the jumps. I was having to leg him off the ground a bit more and kick him forward in the line to get the 7 strides in the bending lines (it was a going 6 or a quiet 7). The oxer got put up to about 2'6" and reasonably wide and he felt SUPER over it. The smaller ones he was definitely kind of bored by at this point. Which is awesome! I'll take it over rushing jumps and it is a strong advertisement for keeping the jumps small for a looooooong time. 

JT had sent me a link to a neck strap a while ago and I asked her to resend it after this lesson and finally purchased myself one. I got it with hunter green padding, but retrospectively maybe should have done burgandy to match his saddle piping. Oh well, you can barely see the saddle details unless you're looking. 

So many straps involved now 

A few days later I trotted over cavaletti at home and still had a shockingly hard time not making a big move with my body over them. We trotted half a clover leaf over two cavaletti until I stopped flinging myself around. It had the added benefit of helping him relax into a rhythm as we did the pattern. 

The next week was Goggles turn for stress is enhancing. The liver pool has become A THING, so we started with that. 

Once that was better, we moved on to the course. I pulled him to a stop at one, but otherwise we did pretty well. For a horse that was once super clutzy, he was shockingly clever with his feet through the one strides. 

I don't know why I still find it so shocking every time I see a picture where he's doing the things

It took us a couple of tries down the two stride line to do it in two instead of three. But I'm still thrilled that he will take the short distance rather than the long sometimes. Plus we were trotting in, so we had to really get going once we were in the line to make it happen. 

Thursday we came back down and he had a training ride with JT coaching and AT riding. He was again shocked and dismayed by the liver pool, so I ordered a tarp immediately after and that is going to be in his field existing. Then he's going to walk over it repeatedly. Then it's going to move. And we'll start again. He had one stop when JT put up a crossrail oxer to a real oxer and he was shocked. She dropped it back to the crossrail oxer and they backed up and then went over it. The next time through he did 6.5 strides to it, but went, and then the final time, he got it all together to do 6. 

It is so helpful to see AT riding and hear JT's remarks so I can try to put it all together as well.

ermagerd, monsters!