Lesson time

Last Thursday I hauled Prisoner over for a lesson.  We really worked on our tendency to be over bold to the fences.

Warming up with walk halt transitions

Working on an independent canter

And not letting his head get to low at the trot

We had two jumps on diagonals and then a three stride across the middle so we could do sort of a figure 8.  The single jumps each had two trot poles in front, and the three stride ended up with three poles due to Prisoner leaving an entire stride out.

He says why be calm when you can be bold!?

She also walked in front of the jumps as we approached to help him back off without me having to get in his face.

Whee!

Um ok Prisoner

Love the colors

It ended really well, I finally had a controllable horse.  One of my biggest take aways was to fully post the trot.  He is very floaty and it is easy to just sort of hover on the approach to the jump.  If I committed to really sitting and really standing he kept the rhythm.

Things we don't want, floating seat and low head set

The three stride jumps got to be really nice as they went up a little.  He had to really jump up and use his body since the poles between kept him from getting long.

Hello knees

We talked about being sure to really teach him to use his body instead of pushing ahead on pure scope.  That way he will really understand what he is doing and not tap out at 3'6".  She said he is freakishly scopey and we need to develop it...yay!

Learning and listening

It was really a fun lesson, gave us lots of things to continue to work on.

Not scared of water

Alyssa came and took all these great pictures, #spoiledbymyfriends.

Soggy arena

Fun times

Time for a bath!