This Tuesday was the first of two jumping lessons in a row (next week, its even a double-length jumping lesson), and I was—rather predictably, given that Gamir and Fleur are gone now, put on Murphy once again. We were also going to continue some work related to the counter-canter of the last weeks, so most of us did get the same horse as last week. Murphy was still rather unhappy in the stable, if not as bad as the last few weeks, and he was also a bit less enthusiastic about the lesson itself, at least initially. I think it may be because he’d not had a good lesson, or maybe one too many lessons, earlier in the day.
After some warmup where we worked them on circles and trotted over rails on the ground, we started off the jumping proper nice and easy. We had an obstacle at each end of the arena and we cantered around and around, focusing on getting a smooth, steady rhythm between and over each jump. Easier said than done, though. Murphy was having more issues with his canter again, and I wasn’t able to get him galloping on at a good pace without also having his hindquarters drifting out on every turn. We did manage to finish up with two pretty good jumps, though; both he and I tend to improve after we get a chance to feel it out.
Following that, we put up another obstacle between the other two, and were set the task of jumping all three in a figure-of-eight pattern. Ulrika made a good point about how to get the right canter after each jump: often, instructors give too many instructions for this, and when you try to follow them all you end up all tense and contorted. This has definitely happened to me, and trying to keep it more relaxed really helped. All she reminded me to do once it was my turn and I had ended up with the wrong canter a few times was to use a slight leading rein in the opposite direction of where I was going when jumping the middle jump at the cross-over point, to give the new inside room to come forward.
It didn’t work every time, Murphy being who he is. But when it worked, I think it helped give me a feel for how to do it, and we did get a nice flow to the jumps after a while. But its not easy when both horse and rider have co-ordination issues.