First free jumpies

My main goal with Opie is to turn him into a super fancy, blow your socks off, please don't notice he's a midget, dressage horse. There aren't a ton of eventing opportunities around here, and those that do run are expensive, prone to last-minute cancellation, and not particularly fun for me. However, I have every intention of sweeping through the disciplines because ribbons, and with the plethora of low key hunter shows in the immediate area on top of all the hunter paces offered, Opie needs to learn to jump.

Jump without clonking through poles without a care for his cannon bones that is. Because he's already super good at that part.

wow so gud. 

It wasn't until I started working with BM that I put any stock in free jumping actually being a valuable tool instead of an excuse to chase your horse around the ring and let them free wheel through a bunch of poles. BM's approach with Bobby showed me that when planned out, there's actually a whole lot of training going on. 

I was working by myself and didn't want to overwhelm Opie on his first go-round--and first time ever seeing anything more than a twelve inch vertical he could clunk over from a standstill--so I started off with three poles on the ground, 9' to a one stride. 

As we all know Opie is not one for, uhh...forward thinking so really my biggest concern here was that I was going to die of exhaustion chasing him up and down the ring to get him to go through the chute. What I didn't take into account was his supreme love for peppermints and how it trumps All Things. 

where them cookies at??

I led him through once each way by his halter and rewarded with a peppermint each time. Then I let him loose at the entrance, shook the whip at him, and met him on the other side with a cookie. I adjusted his ground poles to a teeny tiny X one stride to a bigger X and sent him off by himself. I herded him through the chute, he clobbered everything, and then came to get his cookie. 

Round three?

Child genius. 

I put my phone away to adjust the jumps a couple times and give him my full attention to actually make sure he was jumping things instead of just Hulk smashing. I ended with his tiny X to a 2'3" oxer. The first time through he was feeling so wild and thought maybe he'd run through it because omg so fast.

That clearly didn't work out for him, but because he's brilliant he didn't even stop for a cookie. He went right back around all by himself and fixed the whole shebang. 

And then obviously got extra cookies and finished there. 

superman that ho

jk i'm perfect

It wasn't so much of a "Use your body better" session as a "You have a body" session, but even that little bit has already paid off. I try to incorporate little Xs into nearly every ride just for something fun to do besides the mental hard work of learning to trot on the bit. Opie has felt way more confident in himself on approach--instead of getting wiggly, he's locks on and boldly...trots over. 

Okay, so I didn't instantly create a horse that jumps the moon (or even jumps at all), but he did keep trying to drag me to the little 2' vertical set up yesterday while we were boldly CANTERING little Xs under saddle.  He'll being seeing more of the jump chute this winter!