First real jump!

[Star did her first jump today in the arena, under saddle. Her late owner, Gloria, wanted Star to learn to jump. Star panicked and cleared a 5 foot fence once, and that put the idea into Gloria's mind. I like to think she would have been pleased to see her little girl bravely jumping over her first crossrails.]

I got to the barn pretty early today. Around 8:50 or so. I moved some carts into more long-term storage, I swept the aisle. I chit chatted with Robert about what had gotten done and what needed doing.

The first horse I worked was Colonel. I got him on the long lines so we could work on transitions and whatnot. We had some technical difficulties with the reins. One of my new ultra low friction rein extenders (read: clothesline with snaps) snapped, leaving me with one rein and a horse headed for the door. When all was said and done Colonel had looped that one rein around him several times, and the D ring was in his mouth. That part was impressive to me because these D rings are giant. Alyssa swooped in and fixed everything, I tied a better knot on the snap and we went back to work.

Robert came in and gave me some more pointers on how to help Colonel balance better/not pull on me. Colonel was e x t r e m e l y sluggish. Eventually, Robert brought out a whip, and with more impulsion Colonel's transitions got better. Robert's homework for us is to improve the walk-trot-walk transitions before worrying about the canter much at all. It makes sense, its just not nearly as exciting or direct. Oh well, thats how it goes sometimes.

While I was longlining Colonel, Alyssa was setting up trot poles and a pair of low jump standards. (For some reason I kept not noticing her going back and forth and kept trying to run her over with Colonel. Strange.) The plan was to take Keno and Star over the trot poles and then raise the last pole up into a jump once they got the trot poles down.

I was totally going to be lazy and not bother with it today, but there was the jump and Alyssa was saddling Keno up, so I thought, no time like the present I guess. I put my crappy AP saddle on her. It was borderline as far as whither clearance goes, but with me in the saddle is was off her withers by at least a finger so I'm calling that good enough. She didn't seem to upset about it.

She was upset about Keno being in the arena. She was raised with Keno and Reno and they have a definite sibling rivalry thing going on.

We warmed up and did the trot poles. Star was not so sure about them at first, she insisted on walking through them. After that she trotted just fine both directions. Then we raised the bar, literally. Alyssa set up a crossrail while I fidgeted more with my stirrups. I haven't sat in an AP saddle for so very long, it felt cramped and slippery. I felt cramped and unbalanced. Fortunately Star has gotten pretty tolerant of my riding issues so she took this all in stride. (So to speak, ha ha, yeah... moving on)

Keno went over the crosrail nicely and it was our turn to go. I got a nice forward, albeit somewhat irate, trot from Star. She was shying at the plastic chair as we turned the corner towards the jump. She was somewhat surprised to see it there. She hesitated and stopped, I was about to turn her to try again when she walked forward over the poles and came to the jump. I was really not sure what was about to happen here, or how I was going to deal with this if she wanted to get away from the jump after all.

It seemed like many minutes even if it was only a second or two. She stared at the jump at her feet. I was doing I have no idea what trying to decide where I should be. Then Star popped right over the jump like a good girl. She seemed pretty calm about the whole thing. I was pretty pleased that she was so willing to try to go forward. Normally she's pretty nervous about crossrails, but a vertical would be too high.

Second time over she jumped it, but it was pretty clumsy. Third time over she just trotted the whole thing without bothering to jump. So we raised the crossrail. Thats how I got my first refusal. OMG WTF its DIFFERENT!!! I just turned her around and came back for another pass and she went through it. Instead of jumping the jump though, she decided to jump over the last trot rail and the jump. I was taken somewhat by surprise. It was a big jump. I made that our last jump for the day.

Alyssa went to swap horses so I took Star around the field. She was a little skittish, quite stubborn about the puddle, but basically good. Alyssa came out with Niki and we weren't quite back to the culvert yet so I asked Star to trot over there. The little rat decided this mean canter over to her budy really fast. She came down to crazy rushed trot when asked. Good enough.

We walked around the field the opposite direction as we did on Tuesday. The first part was good, but the east side going home was a little tense for Niki. She kept staring at the neighbors. Alyssa thinks she was looking at the cows, which seems plausible. Mostly Niki just paused frequently, not too much fussing and trotting. What trotting she did Alyssa was mostly able to contain with a nice deep seat.

We had some trouble getting past the scary gate of doom, and then Coleen and gang showed up across the creek and Niki was seriously displeased by this and wanted to go Home Now. After Alyssa got her walking a few strides I suggested that Niki had been a good girl walking around the field and that maybe she should be walked back the last little bit, lest she get herself into trouble. On Saturday we will walk the same direction, since that seemed to be more trouble for Niki, and we will walk across the culvert under saddle. Either she'll be fine, or she will learn how her fussing is dealt with.

After feeding we worked Libby. It didn't go as well as when Robert is there coaching me, but it was OK. I think it was certainly helpful for her training, I just couldn't keep her from pulling on my inside rein. I think I'll see if I can work with Robert some more and learn how to handle this.