Jumping into fun

Posted on November 3, 2017 by the_everything_pony

Even though I said yesterday that I couldn’t wait to get to dressage, I wanted to switch it up (because I’ll get to dressage over the weekend. Let’s do fun things! lol). So we jumped! She’d been so good the past few days that the last thing I wanted to do was seem like we were drilling the dressage work.

The second time I’d ever jumped Amber, I could tell we were doing the right flat work because her canter felt better. It felt active and on her butt. I’ve sort of been chasing that feeling for a while, wondering if I could get it back since it didn’t seem to be forthcoming, and Thursday it was nice to see that we could get it back. By working on lifting Amber Wednesday, I could feel the different power and jump in her right lead. Even her left lead felt really good. So I focused on keeping her shoulders up even if we weren’t quite in the right dressage frame.

And she was really super. She warmed up very nicely in both leads, and even though I wasn’t wearing my sticky pants, she was really calm and focused. She would anticipate a bit, and that caused her to push her shoulders to the left, but a few soft reminders (although a little harder with the leg since no spurs lol) and she willingly let me help her make the canter transition easier.

I set poles on either side of the jump to help her with a ground line. Although with it looking different than before the first few times we popped over it she nearly got me unseated. That horse has freakin roundness when she wants to! (those first two my mom didn’t get unfortunately lol) But I’ll tell you what – Amber’s injection and dressage work and my 2 pt work outs sure made this short jump session feel so much better! I felt more in control of myself (although my hands need so much fixing) and more able to not over jump her (though pretty sure a few times I did) and I think she also realized she felt much better!

I didn’t think we jumped all that much for her to be THIS tired and hanging her lip LOL

But she was so great! We only had one slight funky jump (the one my mom actually cut off a little lol), and the others I felt jumped really well. So much fun! The first videoed jump though was about my favorite (more for being humorous than an actual favorite lol). She’d gone over it this point twice, and had way over jumped it both times, but there was never a question of if she’d jump it. She just felt like she thought “oh THAT’S what it is” and then as you see full on stopped afterward like “okay, I did it! I figured it out!” It was so adorable lol.

After that, I lengthened my stirrups back down to dressage length. I wanted to stretch her muscles, and also let her relax and understand that sometimes after jumping we go do calm things. And she was so good. She could feel my leg and upper body in a different position, and it was almost an “I get it now!” feeling from her. She was very relaxed and moved right into a good dressage trot in frame. We’ve been working a bit on halts, and when I asked her for one, it was our best one yet. And square front legs! So we were done!

She gets today off since I work a long shift, but it was the perfect ride to have a bit of fun. NOW I’m ready to go do dressage again.