He's Fancy, He's Sophisticated

And every little detail matters with this horse.

Backtracking a bit to last week, Butterball and I had our second lesson with PW. And in the way of all things, I had taken our sloowwwwww trot and canter a bit too far, and Butterball needed some jazzing up off the leg. Trainer said that Butterball is not strong enough to jump from that forward canter right now. HOWEVER, when I close my leg he needs to respond with forward. Huh, where have we heard that one. And, my supposition, is that we aren't going to get stronger in that canter if we never practice it. 

We landed and halted after the first two trot fences and then were instructed to CANTER FORWARD away from the fence instead. After we warmed up over the trot fence, we spent the entire lesson over the same vertical and then oxer with three canter poles in front of it. 

Screenshot from the first lesson because there's no new video from the second lesson, but we did get some from the third!

It reminded me of Carly's post on the single pole friend. Because ALL I had to do was ride to the first pole. I did a LOT of different things other than riding properly to the first pole though. I cut in to the left, drifted out to the right, (both leading to jumping the left side of the fence, funny enough...), met it on half-strides, lunged at it, etc etc. 

For whatever reason I had a more passive feeling that whole lesson. I think maybe due to other stuff in life I was feeling some decision fatigue. So I did more letting things happen to me than making them happen. PW got on Butterball and called him a super fun to ride pocket rocket, which is always fun to hear. And shockingly, with him in the irons, pony was super straight and just incredible over the fences. So then we planned a 100% gymnastics lesson for this week. 

Honestly, the most exciting takeaway of the lesson this week was how well my horse goes when I don't drop the outside rein all the time. This helped our canter transitions, helped our turning, and helped our jumping. In order to not drop the outside rein, I had to essentially press my outside knuckles into the fleeciness of the mattress pad that we use with the jump saddle. We started out the lesson mostly drifting left and so got ourselves a set of placing poles down the left hand side of the gymnastics. We also got nailed for lunging at the first pole. PW kindly told me not to let him do that, and I didn't confess that I was actually asking him to do that not just allowing him to do it. I had to go back to the feeling from the first lesson where my only focus was the single ground pole we were cantering. Then I had to keep my outside rein through the turn and stare down the first pole. A little leg between the fences and then we had some magic. He was jumping great and stopped twisting over the fence when I kept him straight with my outside aids (I know, I know, reader, this is serious ground breaking news). 

PW got onto me about two things. The first: I booted Butterball into the canter once when I felt like he was slow off my leg. He bucked, and we accidentally jumped a stack of three poles. He said "that was on you" (meaning me, the rider, again, shock and surprise that I'm the problem), and that Butterball wasn't balanced so couldn't lift into the canter. And again, once I slowed the trot down, half-halted, and then held onto my outside rein, he just lifted up and did some really lovey canter transitions.  The second: Don't drop him in front of the oxer. While negative directives aren't supposed to work as well as directing what should be done instead. That whole adage about not thinking about the purple elephant. But, uhm, I stared at the oxer and internally screamed and definitely shoved my hands at him, completely dropping the contact. So telling me not to do that was completely fair and very effective since I had consciously done just that. 

It is so exciting to feel the jump that we're creating with this work. I purposely included the line where I held too much to the first pole and he broke to the trot and then still jumped through the gymnastic so handily. This pony is scopey, ya'll. Ben felt great over fences this size, but the roundness of Butterball's jump is something I have not experienced before!