Jumping jumping jumping

Now don't get me wrong, I like dressage, Violet likes the jumping, at least stadium.  If you do too much dressage without at least going over a cross rail, she is not happy.  She will spend the entire time you are in the ring looking for the fence you are not going to go over.  I have not had a real jump school with her since the end of July.  That's two and a half months.  I have taken her over fences on my own exactly twice, and the last time was not fun, simply because we were both...scattered.  And that last time was 8" cross rails.  Basically poles.  So I was excited to watch a lesson on Saturday for a ship in student that is at my level (BN) to see what we might be doing.

They worked on rideability.  Starting over a large cross rail, then moving to an exercise that is to canter a small vertical, down to the trot to go over 4 trot poles, up to three strides canter back over a small vertical.  It is supposed to teach the rider how to rate their horse.  If you can't get the first transition down to trot, then halt.  Even if you are in the middle of the trot poles when you stop, you should be able to pick up trot and then canter to the last fence.  Stopping on a straight line after, of course.  From their, they moved to a canter exercise that was to do two canter poles, small vertical, 4 canter poles, small vertical, one canter pole.  This, of course, is a shitload of poles when looking at it down the line.

Loooots of poles

Then they alternated back and forth between the two.  It looked like fun.

Jump to my lesson on Sunday morning.  We did a decent warm up, concentrating mostly on getting her into the outside rein at the canter.  Then moved to jumping.  We started with the trot poles by themselves.  Back and forth.  In the past, trot poles could make Violet a little rushy, because she doesn't want to lengthen.  This time, it was nice and even and not rushy at all.  We did those both directions in kind of an hourglass pattern, concentrating on pushing to the left to turn to the left and vice versa (basically pushing her into the outside rein to turn).  Then popped the cross rail a couple of times to get my timing back.  I have never had a very good eye, and I get so worried about being left behind and hitting the pony in the mouth that I go early, and that makes her chip in, since it's so much weight on her forehand.  So we did that until I could stay back and wait for the jump.  Then we moved on to the vertical, poles, vertical exercise.

Vertical, trot poles, vertical

The first time was a little bit of a struggle to stop, but I did it correctly.  I asked, she said "huh?", I asked harder and she said "What the heck do you want?", so I asked even harder with raised hands a third time and she said "Oh, all right, jeez" without throwing her head in the air.  Which means I asked with tact.  Tact is something I lack in most things, so this is good.  Then we trotted the poles, clucked for canter to the out, stopped and patted.  Then did it back the other way.  She was really quite good about it.  You could tell she had been through the exercise already with my trainer on Friday, because she didn't question it at all.  I was steeling myself up for the canter poles exercise, but I think everyone knows I'm not ready for that yet, so we went from the canter, trot, canter, right turn to another large crossrail to a four stride right bend to another crossrail.

First crossrail on left, second to the right of the mounting block.  No, we did not go over the Prelim oxer, lol.

Right is not a natural lead for Violet, so that required a simple change, which was actually perfect because she thought we were halting after the second vertical, lol.  Then we did the same exercise the other direction, starting with the crossrail bending line to the canter, trot, canter.  Violet was perfect.  We did each of those once and called it a day.  Then we went on a walkabout on the cross country field.

A view of our favorite cross country fence while cooling out.  

Because I had to get home by noon to do some work, my lesson was at 8.  My lesson was short due to my inability to keep up stamina wise, so I was done with my cool out, had Violet bathed and in her stall, all tack cleaned, and was in my truck on the way out of the property by 10.

I was able to get home by noon and run my reports.  System purge is being done, and I had to make sure the numbers didn't change.  Then I headed to the old house to finish getting it ready for rental.  Good news, we have a renter!  Bad news, they way to do final walkthrough this weekend so they can move in next week.  We have a ton to do still to get it ready.  I do not have the attitude of "it's just a rental" so I'm having trouble just doing the minimum.  But it's my house.  It was my first house, and I worked hard to pay it off.  I want it to be someone else's special place, and can't just slap some white paint on it, clean the carpets and floors and call it done.  It needs some TLC.  And of course the place looks tons better than it did the whole 15 years I lived there.  Anyway, I headed over to the house where the boy was cleaning the carpets and painting the last bedroom.

Speed painter

I did some cleaning and planning.  This whole week I will be heading over after work to complete tasks.  Neither of us can wait until Sunday, which is our next planned day off.