Good Jump School Except for Almost Falling Off

Yesterday I brought Liam down to my friends and had a successful first jump school of 2014, only exception was after the jump where I almost fell off!!!  I am really pleased with how Liam listened though.  I knew Liam was going to be fresh.  The weather dropped 15 degrees from the day before and when we arrived at my friend’s barn his eyes were really wide and he was looking around.

I tacked up quickly and headed to the indoor arena.  Hand walked Liam around for about 5 minutes and hopped on to walk around until my friend’s lesson ended before me.  From the second I got on, Liam went into giraffe mood.  Head was straight up looking around and spooking.  Once he started to jig I knew it was time to start trotting.  When he is like this I have learned that you need to send him forward into the bridle.  Well, we were spooking at everything, little sparrow birds flying around, the other horse jumping in the ring, the people in the viewing room, such fun!!!  I did the best I could to stay out of the way of the others riding.

We warmed up walk, trotting, cantering (a lot of cantering), circles, bending, and counter bending.  He finally started to relax a little, but I could still feel the tightness in his back and he wasn’t really accepting the bridle.

Diagram below of exercise/jumps:

Trot in to 3 trot poles 4 ½ft apart, 16ft to a cross rail, to 2 bounce poles set 10ft away from the cross rail 10ft apart, then later adding 18ft to a vertical.

Outside lines were 6 strides.

 

We started out with the gymnastic exercise set on the centerline.

The gymnastic was set with 3 trot poles to a very small cross rail (think raised cavaletti size) to the 2 bounce poles  at first.  I was approching the gymnastic alternating both directions.  Liam was being surprisingly soft and relaxed going through and easily coming back to the trot down the long sides.  I was even lengthening and collecting my trot down the long side to make sure I had him listening going back to the gymnastic.  We raised the cross rail from a raised caveletti height to a real cross rail (18 inch – so BIG, lol) height and went through again both directions.  Liam was being great and I was really pleased.

Then we had the crazy idea to add the last element in.  What were we thinking according to Liam!!!  We set it as a raised cavaletti height cross rail.  Heading back through the exercise, Liam went quietly through until the last element.  He was like, “this wasn’t here before, I better catapult off the ground to make sure I clear it and because I did that I better buck to show my mom my excitement.”  Well, silly me for expecting him to jump it like a normal horse, that I know he is not.  He totally jumped me out of the tack from a teeny tiny raised caveletti!!!  Then Liam landed, before I could get myself organized and leaped back into the air a couple of times to the point where I was completely unseated (memories from fall of 2012 flashed in my eyes, this was common practice back then after every jump).  If he would have leaped one more time I would have been off, thank goodness he stopped and just cantered away.  Now I am pissed at myself for trusting him, silly me.

We continued back through and I just was not giving him the opportunity to leap after the gymnastic and he stopped.  We raised the last jump to about 2’3” and he was actually being really good through.  We worked on staying straight.  Liam likes to swing his hips left and shoulders go right and gets all sorts of crooked.  I would normal correct the shoulders to move them in front of the hips, but my friend suggested correcting the hips and make a wall for the shoulders to not move right anymore.  Once a started doing this Liam got really lovely and all I would have to do is concentrate on a straight chute from my leg to my hands.     

Next we added in a circle at the end of the ring after the gymnastic spiraling in then out and headed down the outside lines alternating directions.  We wanted the add in 7 strides eventually doing the lines the last time through both directions in 6 strides.  We kept them as small cross rails to get the ride-ability that we wanted. 

All in all I am really happy with our first jump school in months.  We kept things simple and small and worked on connection.  Liam did have fresh moments, but for the most part was listening.  I have a lighter schedule this week at work, so I am going to head back down this Thursday to squeeze in another jump school.

Liam will have today off, ugh, low 20s today temperature wise, then back in the 40s all week!!!