Sunday Jump School - VIDEO (although not great)

Decided that Liam's lip was not bothering him at all and trailered down the mountain for another jump school.

I started flatting and he felt ok, just a little blah.  We started out with a line set at 66ft with very small cross rails and were doing 6, 7, or 8 strides.  The 6 or 7 was really easy for Liam, the 8 was a little tougher.  He would invert and fling his head up and break to a trot instead of really sitting down.  We did eventually get the 8 one time.  I haven't really practice the super collected canter with him because I found that he wants to be backed up, so I always encouraged forward.  But I think we are at the point in time that we need to practice this adjustability more.  I am going to set the line at home and practice.  I might have to set it up shorter, like doing a 5, 6, or 7, but I will figure it out.

Then we started doing a course.  The ring started to get really crowded at this point.  At one time there was 7 horses besides myself in the indoor.  The weather was rainy and everyone had to ride inside.  Liam was great compared to how he was a year ago. If that many people came into the ring he would turn into a fire breathing dragon and tune me out completely. He wasn't as ridable in between the jumps as he was last week and I didn't try to get any lead changes, just did simple changes, but I'll take it anyway.  He listened to the jumps with all the activity and we even did a 1 stride in and out!!! 

Our course was the following:

All in all, Liam was a good boy.  Both lines we did the adds in 6 strides.  We kept everything low, like 2ft and I was happy with our performance with all the activity.  We had to circle a couple of times during the course to wait for people to move out of the way, that was a little frustrating, but I need to get better at calling out where I am going, something I am not used to.

My husband came and got some cell video, not the best (he is horrible at videoing, but I guess I should just close my mouth and be thankful - ha), but gives you an idea of what we look like below: