Without help on the ground to move poles, and adjust fences, jumping a young horse on your own is tricky. Last weekend was Dustry’s 2nd jumping lesson and after a week of working very hard on his canter and flatwork I was really looking forward to it. We started off with the usual flatwork exercises and he got his canter strike off’s correct every time, which was very satisfying. Then we began to work through a little grid, which was built up after each time he managed to correctly jump through the previous set up
This is how the grid grew…
- placing pole – cross pole – landing pole
- placing pole – cross pole – canter pole – cross pole – landing pole
- placing pole – cross pole spread – landing pole – canter pole
- placing pole – cross pole spread – landing pole – upright – landing pole
The most important aspect of D’s jump training is making sure he learns correctly how to bascule and use his back over a fence, as he has a tendency to hollow when you touch his mouth in between fences (an old habit from his racing days) we are taking great care in these early stages to get him jumping straight, soft, and round so that when the jumps get bigger he can tackle them with ease.
He seems to be really enjoying his jumping even in the torrential rain! I think we must have had about a week’s worth of rain between 2pm and 2.45pm just enough to saturate horse, rider, and tack and then immediately clear up as soon as we had finished the lesson – typical! The only tantrum D did feel he needed to throw was when he clipped the cross pole with his back legs and decided to have a minor flid about this, on the next run through needless to say he was much neater! 🙂
Video below of his 2nd jumping lesson, and his pole tapping tantrum!