Jump, Jump!

After working over jumps Wednesday, I decided to get back on and go at it yesterday. Spyder LOVES it, and it's what I grew up doing (and love to do, as well as missed like crazy).  I didn't feel like I had the best control for it, but I decided to tackle the control issue, make him slow down, and make him steer so we can both enjoy the work together. Now that we move off of leg and have a decent halt, we can bring more into the mix. The steering has come along great with the help of all of the bending and shoulder work.

The flies really aggravate him!

I got out to the field to work on a quick w/t, added the canter, then did our bending move along the fence line. Once we get the bend to the left, we go to the right, and once that looks good, we go back left. He's getting A LOT easier to steer and handle which makes taking the next steps a lot better! The canter is more consistent and we can move around the field quite a bit. The cue isn't just in the spot where we learned to pick it up, and it works all over the place.

It was showering when I got on, but that didn't stop me. I stopped to try to get a picture of the partial rainbow which shows the jumps, too. We worked on our "S" again with the jumps - look up, sit back, find the next jump, come back to a trot (then repeat). Oh, and give him his head! It's a lot to think about, but we had so much fun. We did the line both ways and added in a few extra jumps. We did the newly tackled white gate, the same old x-rail, the x-rail with the gap, the x-rail on the far end of the ring that we've done, and the wishing well.

The 2 x-rails, wishing well, and a rainbow

The x-rail with the gap

Around and around and around,  the canter was lovely! :) I tried to keep the trot between each fence, but if he wanted to canter, I wasn't going to stop him. He just gets a bit confused if he is cantering up to a jump as he doesn't know what to do with his feet. Either way the strides are huge so getting to the next fence is a tough squeeze if either of us falls apart. He was so happy and excited to be moving, it was wonderful. I filmed us going back to the barn down the track, and the flies were really getting to him. Even without the flies, he insists that his forelock and mane are biting.

The white gate/fence jump

For those of you that know my horse, you know he's push, push push. His pace back to the barn was the same as it was OUT to the field. I think someone is starting to like his job! Also, you'll notice that he *tries* to sneak some grass. We're working on that, but he'll pull any kind of stunt to get to it. In this case, "Ahh, the flies! Oh, grass!" He'll have an "itch" in which he finds his way to grass, too.