Practice make perfect right? So with that in mind I am on a mission to get Dustry as much show jumping practise as possible in order to bring on his show jumping skills.
Working full time, with the ground too hard atm and arena too small at home to do anything very constructive jumping wise I have resorted to boxing him up of a Thursday evening after work and hiring a local arena and jumps. I’m not so sure the rush hour traffic appreciate my new midweek activities but I’m thoroughly enjoying them! 😉
This evening’s session was particularly good despite us having to work in the middle of what appeared to be a plague of biblical proportions of weird black flies/flying ant looking things! Urgh! Dustry was not impressed by the flying bugs and after telling him he had to just behave and get on with his job I swallowed 2 and got 1 in my eye, and was beginning to feel like he might have had a point!
We worked over a high sided x-pole with placing poles to start, then without the placing poles. All the time I am trying to focus on staying behind the movement so that he jumps and I follow, and keeping my shoulders back and open. I have a bad habit of rounding my shoulders which I need to try and kick.
Once warmed up we popped all the fences individually including a water tray, and a couple of skinny block fences, and D was fab, great technique and very ride-able. We then strung them all together in a course and he popped round sweet as a nut! Good canter, good shots to almost every fence, and nice round jumps from him.
It was one of those sessions where everything felt harmonious and to be going in the right direction, and they are pretty priceless.
Over the coming weekends I have lessons, show jumping, and combined training lined up for him so I’m hoping to have made great strides forward (pun intended!) with his show jumping by the end of August.