I wasn't too sure if I was going to ride on Saturday. To be honest I was still hurting from my stirrupless ride on Wednesday. Yes, I take what I said before back. I hurt and bad! Somehow Thursday was fine, Friday started aching a bit, and Saturday was brutal. Work seemed to last double its usual duration because the pain was all I could think about.
After an intense nap on my lunch break, I felt a bit better and decided to go for it. It seemed to hurt more when I pushed my hips forward like walking or stretching, not when I would keep it at riding angle. So it made sense to catch a ride after work.
Since I had been at the Royal the night before, we missed what I had scheduled in to be a jump day. I was going to just let it be missed, and do a hack instead (Saturday was supposed to be hour walk), but as we came down to the plateau, he perked up and trotted right at the nice inviting log jump. Ok, Bentley wants to jump, we can make it the jump day!
We went over the log a few times, approaching it from both directions at the trot and canter. Then we started doing it more at an angle along a circle. This was building up to the exercise I was planning on doing where you have one jump as the centre of your figure 8 and just go over and over. Its supposed to supple them and also help with steering.
We made our way back to the ring, and did the figure 8 exercise at the trot, starting with large circles and gradually making them smaller over a small crossrail. No cantering of course, we aren't yet happy enough with getting that lead so I wasn't going to start confusing him by switching constantly AND throwing a jump in there!
Once that was done pretty well, I added a second jump as a bounce after the crossrail. Of course, we don't do that on a circle, just as a grid. This was Bentley's first time doing a bounce. We approached at the trot, but didn't have nearly enough impulsion to make a bounce jump, he just took them as raised trot poles. Next time, I pushed him more and he broke into the canter stride, but made it very awkward going through as he clearly thought "why do you want me to jump such tiny things?" Ok, I got the picture. I raised the 2nd crossrail to a vertical and approached at the canter. He made it through but it wasn't pretty, weird hopping and foot placement instead of the jump land jump. A few more awkward tries, and I had to push him on more. But then, like magic, he got it! He was so pleased with himself, he always knows when he figures something out, even before I have the chance to reach down and congratulate him. A few more pops over it, and we were good!
It was nearing dark at that point, Tera asked if we wanted the light on, and to her surprise I said "No I want to ride in the dark" I scooted into the now empty indoor arena to do the jump exercise set up there first. It was a jump, canter ground pole, then a jump. Both were verticals about 18" or 2' Enough to make him maybe try, but nothing too scary to take away from the exercise. I think the poles were set at pony length, because his strides felt very short going through it. The first time, he refused the last jump, again, I don't think we had enough impulsion. The second time and third time through were perfect!
I raised the middle pole to be a jump, so it was a line of 3 jumps set at one collected stride. Somehow, he went perfectly over it the first time. He felt very good being collected, but we still had that impulsion to get over. No laziness there! Very happy with him! He also went perfect the second time over too!
More to be happy about was after all that jumping, we decided to cool out by going for a walk in the field, IN THE DARK! He was very well behaved. No spooking at all. He was looking all around, but no troubles, just walked a little slower and more cautiously than usual.
No comments:
Post a Comment