Hot, Rain, Hot, Rain, Hot, Rain Some More

Story of my life. So, sweet little Frank and sweet little Ghost drive me up the walls in the morning when I try to lead them in together. Frank doesn't want to be in the barn all day and Ghost can't wait to eat. So there is lots of dragging of me and dragging of Frank and pulling on Ghost and I end up in a really foul mood too early in the morning. So, today, I decided I would just make the extra trip and lead them each in separately. Problem solved.

Guess what's crazy. One of the ladies who rides here and I chat with every morning has a racehorse, too. And not just any racehorse, it ran in the Kentucky Derby and placed 5th! (Noble's Promise). Pretty cool!

I had an 11:15 jump lesson this morning. Diane and Silver joined us. I took a lot of really good stuff away from the lesson. So, you know how you can end up getting a big distance before a jump or getting a short distance if they chip in a stride? Well, if you didn't, you can. And a lot of the time as you are approaching the jump you see that you aren't going to hit the takeoff from a good place at the pace you are going (more or less) and so you ask your horse to either lengthen his stride (getting a big distance) and take a big one to close the gap or sit up and throw a whole nother stride in there before takeoff. One isn't really preferable to the other (that I know of yet) but if you throw another short stride in your horse has to work harder at the base of the jump to get over, and you have to make sure they know that that is a requirement. And so, during our warm-up we were doing "the circle of death" and my strides kept being a little bit off for takeoff and instead of sitting up and balancing before the jumps, allowing Hick to put in an extra stride, I kept pushing for the long distance, and we did like 4 or 5 jumps in a row like that and Martha was like 'stop stop stop.' And she said 'The rule I live by is that you can get away with 3 big distances in a round. But you can't get away with any more than that, something will happen. More than three and you're just pushing it/asking for trouble." And she said she keeps track in her head of how many big distances she takes. I thought that was really cool, and it helped me a lot as our lesson went on to think about sitting up to balance Hick.

We did a one stride and a triple bar again today, too. Martha set it up and said 'Look Callie a triple bar,' because I told her they made me nervous and she said she loves triple bars and sets them up all the time. And I said, "I LOVE triple bars!!!!!" Which was definitely the right response. Everything went well in triple bar land. Then she set up a triple combination: jump, two strides, jump, one stride, jump. The ONLY other time we had ever done a triple (not to be confused with a triple bar) was at Octoberfest last year in our Training CT. And we had a refusal, of course. And I said, "We've never really done a triple before.." and she looked at me. And I said "BUT I'M SO EXCITED TO GO TRY IT!" (we believe in positive self talk here). And came at it in a course off fairly tight right hand turn off another jump and i could not get Hickory turned (forgot the outside aids) but about three or four strides out I finally did and we sailed right through it! It was cool, it kind of feels like you are a little bit out of control through it (I mean you are) because you only have so much time on the ground and that time is so short there's not a lot you can do with it.

And at the end of the lesson I told her about our cross-country issues. She said that we would go xc schooling three days a week if that's what it took to get over our issues! Which was cool. But she said she thought that the dressage work and stadium work that we were doing would really help and should take care of it. She talked also about using my whip: That if we get out there on the course and he's not paying attention or is only half there (if he is running and being nuts, or lagging trying to go back towards the barn) and not focused that he needs to be popped with the whip, and if he bucks, he needs to be popped with the whip again. But that it's not a punishment, and it's not a way to say bad boy. The whip needs to become the cue for "GOOOOOOOO!" And if he is not paying attention and you use your whip, he should go and respect you and what you are telling him to do and trust that your decisions are good ones. And if he doesn't respect your whip and go, and bucks, you have to smack him again until he remembers what the whip cue means. She said 'Now, don't get bucked off, but be prepared for him to buck." And she said it could possibly result in him taking off with me or bucking but that it was necessary and we would be able to deal with it, that it is important that he knows the whip means go and respects it.

And she said she wanted to set up some skinnies for us to jump next time (i'm pretty sure skinnies don't come up in Novice, mainly just in Training and up, so that's cool that we're starting on that, as well as triples). And also that this week we would experiment with a hackamore (which is basically a bitless bridle) to see if Hickory would prefer it, given his tendency to curl and be really sensitive in his face. Sooo it should be an exciting week!