Jumping!

Well, it wasn't much jumping and it certainly wasn't poetry in motion, but we made it up from an 18" crossrail to a whopping 2'3 vertical two whole times.

Warm up:

Jumping started off with three ground poles we trotted back and forth over a few times each way before Hubby put up an 18" vertical. I trotted Bobby up to it and he sputtered to a stop with too little too late from me. He took one step forward, knocked it down with his knees then had a naughty attack when I expected him to walk over the now downed rail. "You want me to do WHAT?!"

"this is much too big for me to attempt."

"i can't walk over that!! are you crazy??"

ok, dick. let's go get a whip.

So I went a grabbed a whip, then we trotted over the poles again, this time with one solid smack on the rumpus when he thought about stopping at the friggin' ground pole. Point made, Hubby made the vertical into a xrail and we went over that a few times without incident before putting it back up to a vertical. We went over twice at the trot and once at the canter for each height, raising from 18" to 2' to 2'3 before calling it quits.

Obviously we've got a long way to go, but he's only been ridden for five days and it's a slow process. I'm super happy with our progress so far and I think come May, we'll be in a really good spot to start showing.

RE: massage, which I did again after our ride. I am not at all a professional massage therapist and I really don't even know that much about it. I had Carol Troisi of Light Touch Massage out this past July to do Red and Bobby and she walked me through all the work she was doing so I could keep it up on my own. She said that as long as you're not on bone, work the muscles as hard as you possibly can; you can't massage too hard on muscles. I work mostly on his neck with a curry, then along his topline with my hands. Carrot stretches to each side of his body, stretched out to the front, and between his front legs. There's a million more that I can do, but that's all that I work on for now.