The Weekend Report

Friday evening, a dressage school.  With a saddle on we're back to our old warm-up routine: enough walk to trot and then just enough trot to canter, and then we get to work.  In the cold and impending wet he's been coming out a bit stiff behind, with his right side tending to feel half an inch lower than his left.  We're addressing it with straightness and frequent changes of rein and constantly asking the hind legs to swing evenly through.

It's slow going; this calls for different muscle than trotting down the trail and I'm trying to stay aware of that and to be generous with brief stretchy walk breaks.  It's coming along, though.  Had some really nice moments with his hind feet stepping up under my heels and that particular puppet-string feel, like the shoulders are suspended from -- and lifting to -- my hands and the neck arching kindly onto the bit.  And I do think all those trail miles are paying dividends.  We're both straighter than we were a year ago, and the baseline texture of the connection is pretty nice.

Saturday, a walking hack out in the snow during which some pony randomly decided to be terrified of the neighbor's truck.  Much more forward walk after that encounter, though, so all to the good!  Still not thrilled with how tired my thigh muscles get riding bareback over terrain, but I guess there's only one cure for that.

And Sunday -- after I drove out to visit (another) Amanda and the adorable Simba -- we jumped:

Evidence in support.

I lucked out; other folks had apparently jumped earlier in the day, so I was able to rearrange fences instead of starting from scratch.  Built a single bounce of crossrails on one quarterline and trot poles to a crossrail one stride to (ultimately) this 3'3" oxer down the middle, though of course we put the latter grid together piece by piece.

Again, kept it simple.  Forward through the turn and waiting on approach.  Trot in and halt straight.  Stay soft to the fences, let go over top, and soft again on the backside.  If I'd had a ground person, I'd have floated the back rail of the oxer out a little wider to finish, but I'd already been on and off him a couple of times and honestly, he gave me nothing about which to complain.  Tried to canter through the trot poles once, but not again.  Rapped the vertical once and then jumped me a little bit loose every time after that.  He did consistently sneak a canter stride in before the bounce, the stinker -- I'd left the trot poles off of that grid; I wanted it jumpable both ways -- but did his footwork brilliantly, so I let it be for tonight and just made a mental note to set up everything with poles forevermore.

I was really pleased with how straight he jumped through the one-stride; there wasn't much hint of that pesky rightward drift.  And I really loved the combination of grid and bounce.  My goal in life when jumping this horse is to keep him forward enough that I have something with which to wait, but not downhill and running.  Taking him through the bounce at intervals was really helpful in convincing him to self-correct and ping up off the ground before I got tempted to start picking a fight.  We'll do more of this for sure.

Also I accidentally bought a dressage whip when I stopped at Dover to pick up new winter riding gloves for actual riding, as opposed to just staying warm and sort of holding onto the reins.  Turns out Fleck makes a whip even better-balanced than the Superflex.  I justified the purchase on account of the counterweight...

...which will clip nicely to saddle or saddlebag via a carabiner and thus should avoid being left by the side of the road in Vermont!