Jumping Jumps!!

Pretty Morning 

We jumped things and did a bit of canter work in the field. Uno did not start off wanting to do the riding horse thing.  When he is like this he his behind the leg, off the bridle, and he takes his back away from the rider.  In our warm-up, we had a few moments when he just wanted to canter on the spot and not go into the bridle at all.  So we compromised.  If he kept his shoulders and neck straight in front of his hips, I would just loop the reins and get out of his way.  A few trot canter circles like this and we moved to jump.  

Our current set up.

SHOCKINGLY (not), these issues followed us into jumping. So we went to a 20 meter circle over the x-rail until we could trot in and canter out in front of my leg.  Once we got that I started adding fences.  As soon as he would try and drop behind my leg we would start over.  

The end result was a few rotations of GREAT jumping on his part, and OK choices on mine.  My real victory was not throwing my hand and shoulders at him at the base of the jumps.  This meant that even when our distances were a bit tight, Uno had the support and balance to jump UP and not take any rails.  I was super proud - he is not careful with his feet, so this is a big deal for us.

One day it will not even be a thing to jump these.

Then we went and trotted and cantered around the field focusing on keeping our balance and rhythm the same both up and downhill.  When we got that both ways, we called it a day.

It should not be so scary to jump a little fence.