Jumpity Jumpity Jump

Wednesday I had a jump lesson on Pongo and we struggled.  Straightness has always been a problem for him, and he was fairly wiggly.  Read he was bouncing off my legs and reins, but not so much he bailed on a jump.  One good thing about him is even when he is wiggling and asking to bail if you say no he says ok.  On top of the wiggles, he was seriously over jumping everything.  It went something like this, "Ok Pongo lets trot this cross rail (~18")."  His response, "I will jump this like there is a horse eater underneath it/like it is a 3'6" jump."

His neck is looking good...in my totally unbiased opinion

Talk about awkward.  I could never quite get my balance to stick with the over jumping.  Everything felt awkward.  I was never close to falling off, but I never felt very secure.  Every distance felt awkward and we couldn't establish a rhythm.  I was feeling a little discouraged because there really isn't much you can do when your horse decides to jump higher.  Long, short, crooked you can fix, but height that is kind of up to him.  He was balanced going into the jumps, but we looked a mess.

Fastforward to Thursday.  He got it together! We had one of our best jump sessions.  We were balanced and made it through a full course twice.  The first time we had some bobbles with the leads (my fault) and the second he forgot to pick up his knees and kind of stumbled.  It wasn't bad and we recovered smoothly.  It was a fun course and we even had an oxer, which I don't think I had done before.  It was a baby one, but still new and different.

I am thankful for my training in sticky situations when I was a kid.  Jumping doesn't phase me when things go wrong.  I just keep his head up, send him forward, rebalance, and continue on.  It didn't even occur to me that I should have been nervous until S told me it was a really good recovery.  I was also shocked when she told me my lower leg was really steady.  I need to get my heels down more, but right now I don't have any more stretch in them.  I guess I could crank them down, but that will cause tension else where and I prefer the balance over having my heels cranked down.  Damn ankles and their lack of mobility.  Overall, I was pleased with our lesson.