Cashmore clinic- Rascal- Day 2

Rascal was my first ride on the second day. I already had her warmed up so we got straight into it. Again we did the trot rails exercise cantering down to the oxer down the right hand side of the course (See diagram below). It walked as a tight 6 so with the trot fence we were cantering down in 7 to get a nice round jump. Rascal really surprised me today with how confidently she jumped and how she carried me to the fences without hesitation.



Again the focus was straightness and strength. It's hard for Rascal to maintain her canter all the way to the base so often she runs me a bit deep. But she is a million miles improved from where she was, so to be honest I'm pretty happy. there is hope yet for my big plan to sell her to the States as a childrens hunter so I can have a holiday in Europe lol. (To be fair she would make a lovely childrens hunter, I schooled her bareback today and she was awesome). Then we did the righthand line as an upright to the oxer in the short 6 strides, which wasn't terribly short for her, but thats fine.



Then we went up the righthand line oxer to upright and rolled back over the upright and did the dogleg of 7 strides back to the first oxer backwards. Once she was doing this well, we tried the left hand line going down, the oxer- four strides to the one stride double.



She jumped in too small the first time and I really motored hr down to make the distance. Apparently Grant had told me to turn away but I never heard him so I kept going. GHe said I gave her a nice positive ride! LOL! She was better the second time with a better jump in.



One thing that is apparent, across all the second day lessons is that I need to be more organised when I'm jumping courses. Land, get the canter organised and collected to early to give me more room and time to ride up to the next fence.



Still a good lesson, Rascal is so much more confident and happy in her work and she is really starting to improve. I'm working really hard to fix my gimpy left hand which wants to hang on, so subsequently all my horses hang off of the left rein and as soon as I lighten it they all go better. I think maybe it's improving? I'm not that optimistic.