Lesson Time - Jumper version

Because we kept Monday's lesson short and "sweet", Butterball and I headed back down on Thursday for another lesson. 

Before the lesson, declaring himself to be too tired to possibly go on

I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw the circle of doom exercise was no longer set up in the arena. Instead we worked on some jumper type turns and exercises. Butterball and I had done a fix-a-test on Wednesday and gotten some insight into his canter that I used during the lesson as well. 

The side eye at being forced to pose for pics rather than receiving his German Horse Muffins for doing such a good job

I focused on keeping his canter soft and keeping him properly bent through the turns. And I don't know if it was that or a difference in the difficulty level of the exercises for him, but he was soft and happy with (almost) no bucking. The only little hop came when I backed up my leg with a poke of the spur. And all his changes were clean and quiet. 

I also focused on keeping the horse straight. I have been slowly realizing over the past few months how crooked/wiggly I had become tolerant of (or encouraged... surely not that...). So each jump I tried to make sure we were jumping the middle with his shoulders going exactly where I had asked. PW had to stand at a spot on the rail once to get us straight for the 5 stride line. He pointed out that we weren't far off, but we were jumping slightly left to right which was then making the line ride longer, something that makes it even more challenging for the 14.2 pony to buzz down the line in horse strides then. That fence was off the left lead, but we had a similar straightness struggle from a short turn off the rail to a vertical off the right lead. 

We did struggle a few times with the five stride line. It turned out it had been set for larger fences at a 75' distance, not a 72' distance. But each time pony happily added a half stride and popped on out. We did redo it a couple of times once the distance was brought in and then he happily motored down it in five strides. 

I had watched the videos from Monday and tried to internalize NOT shoving the horse past his distance. Mostly I was successful at that. It is such a fine line between keeping the motor revved up around turns and shoving him past the distance the last three to five strides to the fence. 

At the end, we played with a jump off type course with two tight inside turns, one of which was to an oxer. The other inside turn was to the liverpool, but PW kindly dropped that to a smaller vertical. It was a lot of fun and while we kind of flubbed the plank jump (because of struggles staying straight/me pushing too much), the rest of it rode really well. 

We both declared the lesson a success with another round of happy, confident pony jumping all the things. We did have a kind of hilarious oops moment in the cross ties afterwards. I had been standing chatting and then went to brush a fly off his face. He must have been dead asleep because it spooked him (he's never ever been head shy before) and he pulled back and broke his halter. Fortunately I just wrapped the lead rope around his neck and put him on the trailer nekkid. We also hacked up from the back of the field that way until I could get the leather punch to add another hole to the breakaway strap. Seriously the golden child, this pony.  

Herro! No halter needed