After finishing what I hope is the almost-final version of my paper, I was (as always after concentrating on some work for a long while) feeling very tired today, but I still dragged myself to the stable. Jumping was on the menu, and I was kind of expecting to get Murphy. But, no. Instead, I ended up getting Gamir, which admittedly isn’t such a bad deal. He’s probably the most well-schooled horse in the stable, and a pretty darn fabulous jumper. There’s just one small problem with him: he hates, and I do mean hates, being saddled.
Today, he even hated being brushed, though I probably didn’t find a soft enough brush. He can be a very sensitive gentleman, you see. So, while I tried to brush him, he tried to kick the side of his stall down. He’s got a very ... impressive kick-action. Fortunately, I managed to catch the ones he thought of aiming at me before they went anywhere, and so got him ready and tacked up without any damage to anything but the wall. However, given how testy he’d been, I was a little concerned that he’d be very sensitive about his back, as he used to be last semester. This semester, he was injured to start with, and then he’s just been doing lower-level groups, so this was the first time he’d been in our group for months. He also came back to jumping only last week, but I figured he’d still be his usual, well-mannered self anyhow.
Once down in the arena, I was pleasantly surprised when I mounted up, as his back didn’t feel stiff. Instead, he allowed me to sit deeply and steadily from the start, without suddenly developing a light hind-quarter and a tendency to want to throw in a little buck if you were to put pressure on him too early. Encouraged by this, I rode him forward quite well, and our instructor was pretty happy with our early work across ground poles. Of course, doing anything jumping-related on Gamir is almost like cheating: unless you’re incredibly skilled, he’s at his best when you don’t interfere and let him handle things. Still, today’s exercise called for neat lines and good transitions, so I did have to work a bit at least.
I am not at my best jumping from a trot, but it still went quite well. It was once we switched to an obstacle set along the central line, which we were supposed to trot or canter (on a right lead) towards and after it land on a left lead as well as turn left, that things worked the best. We had a choice between approaching it on a straight line, which would prevent the horse from slipping off to the left before the obstacle but which would make it harder to land on the right lead and go the right way afterwards, or approaching it at an angle. Given how well-schooled Gamir is, I opted to canter towards the obstacle and picked a fairly steep angle. Worked like a charm, and my instructor said that with such a well-trained horse, the angled approach was the best choice, and also that cantering rather than trotting towards it was much better as my seat improved a lot. The second time we did it, she was really pleased with how I didn’t sit back too much and allowed him a lot of rein over the obstacle even though he’d gotten a little hot. She said I seemed a lot less timid, and that’s probably true. While I always give a lot of rein over the obstacles, I’m sometimes holding the horse back too much before take-off.
The last exercise for the day, alas, didn’t come out quite as well. We put everything together to a small course, involving both ground poles and obstacles, and I probably should have opted for approaching the obstacles at a canter now as well. It felt a little crowded, so I opted for a trot, but now Gamir was enjoying himself enough that he did break into a canter before each (I did allow him to just flow on, though, rather than trying to interfere too close to take-off), and that resulted in a faster canter (due to the quick acceleration) than if I had moved into a canter earlier on. Over the second-to-last obstacle, he got away from me a bit, and we didn’t get a very good line for the one on the centre line. Of course, he jumped even though we came in on a steep and somewhat wobbly line, but I did end up out of synch with him and pulled his mouth a little at the landing. And while I was busy apologizing to him, I forgot about the last set of ground poles until reminded.
Unfortunately, we only had time to do the course once, and I really would have liked to try it again to correct some of my own errors. Still, pretty happy with the overall result, and very happy that Gamir was feeling much happier about his back. Hopefully I’ll get the chance for some dressage lessons on him soon.