Practice and Patience

Monday I followed through with my plan to try the new fence setup. I didn’t bother raising any of them from the small height they were set at. I wasn’t looking for jumping heights as our goal. I wanted to work more on the turns. We generally only jump one or two fences at a time so courses aren’t a normal thing.

Scarlet was pretty good, no spooking while grooming. I think he has figured out that I’m not carrying a whip. He tried to stop several times when doing our warm up. This resulted in me having to spur him. His ears said he didn’t like it but he paid attention after that.

Once we warmed up, I pointed him at some jumps. He went over our normal warm up fence just fine so I continued on to the next fence and the next. We ended up doing the whole course I was planning on doing without any issues the first time.

We switched leads and did a different course that stuck just on the left lead. And he was amazing that way too. Our left lead is our worse jumping lead. I have been trying to jump more on the left lead. There has been a couple of rides where we popped over a very small fence on a circle. I think its a byproduct of Scarlet not wanting to move as forward on that lead. He prefers a lope-esque canter on the left. Getting him moving forward on that lead has been my goal on flat work days. It’s… a work in progress.

Wednesday was a hard day at the barn. I got there and a horse in the stall across from Scarlet was down. Not colic but she was old and definitely had a wound on her head. I’m not sure what made her fall in the first place but she wasn’t getting up. Not even with four people attempting to make her stand. I spend a lot of my ride leaking. Every time I came around the arena, I had a good view of her stall and the people attempting to help her. The vet was called but hadn’t gotten out to the barn before I left. I called it an early day as I felt so sorry for the owner and couldn’t help but think about what I’m going to do when that time comes. I know for sure that I’m going to fall to pieces so I try not to think about that as often as possible.

Thursday I planned on going out to do lateral work but that plan got thrown to the side when Scarlet basically gave the middle finger to my canter aid. So we ended up working on transitions. We did lots of transitions from canter to trot and back. He got tense, as he always does when we do those transitions. I avoid repetition with this transition for that reason. But that is probably the wrong response. He needs to be able to relax when we do multiple canter-trot transitions, rather than anticipate that he is doing something wrong. I’m planning on doing more of those thrown in throughout the rides now.

As for two-pointober, I haven’t been committing to it like I have in the past. I am doing some. I’m two pointing for two laps on each canter lead. I had been doing a bit of that to get Scarlet moving forward and his back looser but I increased it in honor of the month. And my thighs are sore, which is probably a good thing. More muscles equals success right?