Today I was supposed to meet a friend to jump. She was wanting to jump, and.. I knew if I took Dan I would be tempted and probably do too much, so I took Lyric instead. Plus he has a lesson at Ashland tomorrow so he'll get to hack tomorrow. (weather pending). So... I opted to ride him at home. It was so pretty this morning I was tempted to take him to Ashland too, but that's a lot of diesel and time. And after I got home and had lunch it started to cloud up and it was still nice, but not as glorious of a day. So I decided to drag the arena first.. before the rain... and then set up a grid. I've been wanting to do some grids to help him use himself better for jumping and ease our way back into jumping. And now, not only is the arena drug before the rains, but it's also drug before the grid got set up, so I won't have to drag again for a few days and can leave the grid out for Jean. I can't find my grid book but did find one online that was good for "pushing power". So I set that up. And I'm a terribly mean mother because instead of letting him build through it incrementally, I just... set it up and expected him to figure it out. Doh! It's really hard to do grids by yourself! And he's educated. And it was basically a cavaletti, three strides to a 2' vertical, then three bounce poles to a 2'6" vertical. So I figured it would be fine. And it was.
We did a tiny bit of pillar 3 work and then hacked up to the arena. We did our walk work... and then our trot work.. and then some canter work. We focused on our transitions in all gaits and everything is getting better. I also focused on not nagging with my leg and keeping the contact even in the reins. We worked on keeping his neck in line with his withers and not going too low but not cheating and inverting his neck. And we got some really nice trot! It felt pretty springy! His canters are definitely SOOOO much better now that his hocks were injected. And he's able to build his strength too. Yay!
I decided to trot him over the caveletti first a time or two so he knew we were jumping. See, I'm not super mean!! He was happy and was like "oooooh, we're jumping!". So we turned down to the grid and trotted to it. Ha! He broke into the canter two or three strides out and went for it! He was super game but very quick and big and bold. But yay!! It makes me happy that he's excited. He got through it pretty well despite being quite strong and having to shorten a hair to make the final fence. And while we were hugging the right side of the line, he stayed straight throughout. We did it a total of 3 times I think and then I decided I wanted to pivo it. But I had left the pivo pod at the trailer. Whoops. So I just put my phone on the fence and hit record. Hee hee. My position is Awful!!! Good gravy I'm so out of jumping shape. I'm all over the place. So we did it a second time so that I could improve myself. I worked at sitting up better and not throwing myself at the fence. It helped a little bit I think. Good boy. So we quit with that as tempting as it was to do more. He got less aggressive to it the last two times and was quite soft on the final one.
Then we went back to some flat work and did a bit more trot and canter. We played with the shallow serpentine loops at the canter and that went pretty well. We did a walk to canter each way and then we finished with a nice happy trot! Good pony!
We were going to hack to the lake but... meh. Neighborhood riding isn't as exciting or beneficial, so we just headed bcak to the trailer. Good pony!
Fingers crossed that we don't get rained out tomorrow and can do a nice long hack after our lesson.
hee hee... Oh D-Rex.. why do you have to eat my reins!?.. my expensive fancy reins!!
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