The Owls Approve

Archie

My trail buddy has been giving me jump lessons on Ox over the past couple of weeks. We used to do it on Sundays after we went on a trail ride, but then our trail rides got bigger and we ran out of time. We've met twice before the trail ride to do a quick jump school, which I find is just as effective as a longer one.

She's a retired h/j trainer. We don't see eye-to-eye on the same things, exactly, like chipping versus the long spot (chipping makes me want to barf), but her knowledge and confidence and eye on the ground has been invaluable in my path to becoming a jumper* again.

*not like, literal jumper.

These mini lessons tend to start out the same way, which, though it sucks because it's work, is fucking awesome:
↣ getting the big orange booty moving that big orange booty forward, without his shoulders popping
↣ going from a working trot to a collected, sit-trot and back to a working trot. I'm okay at this, but recent visits to the tattoo parlor have made this exercise particularly ouchie.
↣ some dressage, like leg yielding and shoulder-in. we work on this by ourselves when it's too dark to jump, too.
↣ and canter stride work, which has lately been adjusting between 4 and 6 strides in a five-stride trot pole set up, and counting out five strides before the fence, because it gives me something else to focus on other than my imminent death.

I gotta say, busting my leg did absolutely nothing for my confidence. I will jump everything she sets up, but I am seriously so much more comfortable trotting into a line and cantering out or trotting up to singles. This is ironic because the line that I crashed on was a trot in-canter out line, but the brain makes no sense.

Here's a 43 second video in which she tells me to keep my eyes up seven times.

Over fences, we've been working on courses and getting my body and eye better. I love to curl up on myself with my knees squeezing for dear life when something is scary. This is not a safe position. Brain makes no sense. So we work on getting my tatas out, lengthening my leg and getting my heels down, and sitting up and back to the base of the fence. I forgot for a while that I had hands and should release, but my heels were certainly pretty. We're getting there.