Quick Jumpies

It's hard to get excited about chipping away at the dressage work day in and day out when show season seems like it's not going to happen more and more every day. Which I still haven't even been able to bring myself to get too upset about.

2020 is going to be the worst. It may only be March, but I'm content to be resigned to that fact already.

While I still love dressage of course, we've been getting our jumping on with much more frequency than before. Now that Dopie's mostly figured out the use of his body, jumping him is easy and fun. I don't have to worry about him falling face first into the dirt upon landing and all that.

still gets a face full of dirt regardless. he lost the race to the
gate and was covered in kickback.

BM and I rode together yesterday. I wanted to jump, but I had zero inspiration when it came time to set a course. I threw up a few things scattered across the ring and called it good.

snooze fest

We made the most of it regardless. I hadn't set the bounce to single vertical (2'9) as a line, but we ended up riding it as one both directions. We did both jumps of the two stride individually by cutting in from the middle. I did the single vertical both ways, including on a circle off the left lead for a super short approach.

The two stride was set at 33' as we tried to meet in the middle between Opie's pony stride and Mo's giant 14' stride, but Opie still had to get in and go to reach it. Poor kid, he did a good job though with the exception of one time. We came in from the (swedish) oxer side for the first time and he got in from an awkward distance because he was rude and ran through my hands. He landed crooked, tried to bulge out of the line, and I got him back in and made him jump out on sort of a three. Better the second time though.

He was much more relaxed than the last time he jumped--after game night when he was bombing around like a maniac over everything. I was also proud of myself for picking up the canter and jumping over and over and over. A lot of times I do a few jumps, don't die, and sit on that for a good long while before building myself back up to doing it again.

Opie is so easy to jump though. The worst he does is jump a little flat and over his shoulder, but he doesn't hit anything, it's just not as nice of a feeling in the air. 2'9" is nothing to him anymore, he jumps it the same as anything else.