So I took Bird out the other day to jump over these xc fences I’ve been building. I also, because I am a wimpy middle-aged sad sack, took along some regular “fall down” style jumps so that we could warm up over stuff that would fall over it he hit it.
Click to see how that went... (spoiler: nobody died.)
Warming up over the fall-over fences was a bit sticky, but it was material he’d seen before and went reasonably well. In the (flat, level) warm-up area, I’d also used my awesome bucket hooks and chains to install a temporary log fence of an imposing 18″ or so. Pine log, laying on small firewood rounds, seriously terrifying, here. This was so that I could introduce natural obstacles in a “Oh, look, so we jumped that other shit and now we are jumping this shit” sort of way.
Bird was “My name is NO, my sign is NO, my number is NO” about that. Fall-downable fences OK, unimposing log jump NOT OK. He slipped out to the side, kept his head turned right (and facing the jump) but his body popped off to the left, led by his left shoulder. Bird pulled this twice, and it improved the second time in a “Sure, lady, I will turn towards the jump, just not my BODY bwahaha I am SOOO clever” sort of way. The third time it did not go like the first two times. He thought it was gonna go that way, but he thought wrong. If you’re a horse trotting along and you bend yourself in half, looking strongly right and moving left toward the angle point of your left shoulder, it does not take very many physics for the rider to weight that left stirrup a tad and pull just a wee bit harder on the right rein to lay your ass out flat on the level, soft grassy field and put your little footies in the air.
Son, do NOT play with me because I will lay you out.
Boy got up, I got up. We were all fine. I got back on, da Bird jumped right over the small log fence like he’d been doing it forever. Yay. And then, dear readers, that boy jumped absolutely every single thing I aimed him at the rest of the day. No bullshit, no refusals, no swerve-y runouts, nothing. Good aim, good enthusiasm, good striding, good efforts. Bird was “I jump things. Let me show you how well I can jump things. No, seriously, I’m like a point-n-shoot horse, here. Lookit me jump the things!”
It looked pretty much like this:
So... to get your dipshit 5 yr old arab to jump all the things, lay him out in the grass during warmup. Good to know. I need to finish a couple of more jumps so that I have some rideable lines -- right now it’s tough to string things together because not all the fences are done. I feel like we will probably be able to string things together, though. I did not get the impression that any of this stuff was difficult for Bird and like seven or eight strides is plenty for him to get his shit back together after a jump. (He is largely self-assembling. I expect him to take some ownership here, something along the lines of “Oh, hai, we R jmping, I will get in jmping cantr!” We’re working on adjustability and stuff, but he’s green and so am I. For this reason the jumps are small, easy to ‘read’, and well within his ability level.)
Also, Bird is somewhat confused by the creek jump. He totally did it, like five times, but I feel like if I build “edges” for the creek, he could jump it better. Right now it has soft banks and he’s not that sure what the proper procedure is to get over the thing. So, he’s edging up to the edge and “End of the Trail” ing (It’s a Remington bronze) his feet and finally he’s all “OK I JUMP WAH!” but I’d like it to be a bit smoother and involve less crunching up of the body and wobbling around at the front end. I think defined take-off and landing edges might help with that.
Also, because he was so committed to the jumping things stuff, we revisited the fall-downable jumps in the flat part of the field. In particular, we revisited the terrifying 2′7″ fence of terror. (Normally we do 2′ or 2′3″ and that’s getting pretty safe. Like, it’s not horrible. 2′6″ seems very far away from 2′ and it looks a whole lot bigger... but it’s on my agenda so that we can Hunter Pace this fall.) The terrifying 2′7″ fence of terror was not particularly terrifying for the horse. He was fine. He can trot 2′7″ fences, just fine.
In three weeks or so, we will revisit the xc. Watch this space.