Jumping

Had a little bit of a jump around today. Nothing over 80cm but it was the first day of my new strategy of jumping only fences with scary fill. This is mostly because I know Kate is a looky loo and I need to learn to cope with that better. With Kate it's mostly about learning to ride her so smoothly so she keeps her canter all the way to the fence, and making sure she adds that stride s she gets right to the base, instead of letting her run and drop a stride out. My word she gave me some funny jumps. Lots of really round ones, where she looked down at the fence between her knees.

By the end of the session she was jumping really nicely and quietly and I was able to just sit quietly and maintain and then give her lots of leg at the base of the fences and the whole thing was a lot more relaxed. Love the new saddle to jump in so much. I'm sure the old saddle not fitting didn't help her jumping. Rascal was having a muley day. She started off ok but she is still so weak. I have so much work to do on her canter it's almost a little daunting. We paid a fair sum of money for her, and to sell her and get that back I really need to get her going more, and that adds some pressure. She just doesn't jump off of her back end very much, she is just throwing herself over the fences, which she didn't used to do a couple of years ago, so I'm going to assume it's a product of the lack of strength. I also need to watch that my body stays tall even when I see the longer spot and ride up some.


Not the sort of picture I would usually put up because she looks crap, but you see all the mud down my pants! And well the good with the bad hey.

Well anyway, we had a plain little gate that Kim put in the angles of a cross bar and Rascal came round and stopped, but then at the last minute jumped and threw me into the air. I landed mostly on the saddle and started to pull her up and try get my balance but then she took off and as I tried even harder to pull her up she did some very small bucks and removed me before I got my balance back. I really did think I was going to be ok and get back into the saddle but it was not to be. Still after that she jumped everything just fine even though I was feeling a bit chicken. Still that is riding, you have to take the downs with the ups. And bruises are cool.



Halfway through the session I changed Rascals bit from a mullen mouth egg butt snaffle to the rubber mullen mouth pelham, because she was just blowing off my half halt. That helped a lot because she couldn't just piss off with me. Still it feels like a step backwards especially when her flatwork is coming on really well. Hopefully I only need to use it a couple of times and then I wont need to again.