Schooling Rides

Nearly every single ride lately has been along the same lines: w/t warm up with good stretch, focusing on staying forward with good bend and good push and plain old good basics....and then into the canter we go, mother fucker, because every day is changes day now!

answering the horse whinny from my phone while i tried to get 
his ears up

This has maybe unsurprisingly taken a large amount of the drama out of the whole process. Obviously that's what I was hoping for, but one never knows with Opie, and our track record with changes has been this: THE DRAMA NEVER STOPS.

We went from not being able to pick up the canter whatsoever without instantly locking up and revving up for all the ridiculousness that coming across the diagonal (or turning, or doing anything) brought to having a canter now. Is it the quality I want? No, of course not. But we can do a change, or flub a change, or whatever, and then come back to the walk before picking it up again sanely. That's a big deal.

Also a big deal is, though, that the changes themselves are coming quicker and they're fairly normal. His favorite evasion as become the big leap into the air with legs going everywhere, but when he lands he hasn't changed anything. I caught onto that quickly and just pull him around to the lead we stayed on to come back around again. 

When he does give me the change--and again, they're coming so much faster and more reliably now!--he gets mega praise and then has a good stretch walk break. 

He had the best one right after the Janet Foy clinic when I put him back in the double and he was just fucking nailing everything I asked for. (So much better in the double omg.) I kept in mind her walk through of the simple changes and asking for the walk as the front in came up. We did a few simple changes focusing on that, but honestly he's really good at them in the double so they we fine. I carried that over into the ask for the change. Quiet, quiet, quiet in the body for me, make sure I'm constantly half-halting so he doesn't anticipate and start flinging himself around, and as the front end lifted up switch legs and ask. He popped right over with a little jump but clean as could before cantering off like nothing had happened.

I poured the praise on him and quit there because he'd been super the whole ride and that felt like the perfect spot to quit. 

The next day we meandered around bareback and bridleless before doing a real ride yesterday to prepare for this weekend's hunter show.

spooking at the jump after having already jumped it

I set up a 4 stride down one side, a 5 stride down the other, and the 2 stride across the diagonal. All between 2'3-6". To the left he was fine doing the first jump in the line and then rolling back to the first jump on the other side. The first time we went straight down the line he went FULL SEND and launched basically into the second jump and then landed nearly on his head. My pulley rein barely got him slowed and I ended up having to run him into the wall to stop him. 

Fortunately that put an end to the drama going left. Start it all over to the right! He wanted to get super backed off to the first jump, but then land and gallop down the line like a lunatic. I finally had to have another CTJ and pulley rein him to a stop in front of the second jump to get through to his brain that bolting isn't the answer. 

I was kind of worried he'd be squirrely coming through again since he'd just been thoroughly told off and basically yanked to a halt in front of the fence, but he understood the correction and we were able to do the old rating thing after that. 

The two stride he jumped like a monster--in a good way. He was a little looky at the gate since it was the first time he'd jumped it with the rail on top, but I was a grown up for once and simply kept my leg on coming up and he jumped the shit out of it and then jumped the shit out of the wide oxer on the out. 

After taking a long walk break to catch my breath, we finished with a perfect line off the right lead. 

He'll get one more school tomorrow, his PEMF, and then show on Saturday!