After a day’s break, just enough to get various sore muscles to start thinking they’d survived, it was time for the last day of the jumping class. Summer finally returned today, though we still had to jump indoors since they were preparing for tomorrow’s competitions in the outdoor paddock. Too bad, as Murphy could have used the extra space. His mind was definitely already on the month-long break from all work that the horses now get starting this weekend.
Warm-up was similar to the previous two days, though she suggested we work some on circles and leg-yields as well. Good idea, since Murphy was (once again) really ignoring my right leg. Either I have strained that leg because I’ve had to work harder on the right, or he’s able to ignore it because its a bit sore and not so effective. The end result is the same, anyway; sucky turns to the right.
Once we started jumping, I was surprised by how briskly Murphy trotted towards the first obstacle. Given the weather, I had expected to have to urge him on quite a bit, but instead I had to try to slow him down. Try being the operative word, as he’s been a bit insensitive in his mouth over these three days. Still, he jumped well enough, and I managed to keep him at a trot even when she put it up to around 70-80 cm.
Following that, we added another obstacle to that same line down the length of the arena, making it a related distance. For some reason, Murphy was pulling very strongly inwards (to the right, his troublesome side), so I had a hard time coming in straight at the first obstacle. As a result, two strides (at a canter) between the two obstacles didn’t work perfectly for him, though he sorted it out pretty nicely and I managed to more or less wait for him to jump off and to keep my upper body fairly still. But being the slightest bit tired seems to mean I slip back into bad old habits really easily.
After jumping that line a couple of times, we moved straight onto jumping a whole course. This time, she split us into two groups and gave each a different course, somewhat tailored to what we needed to practice. The one I got consisted of a fairly short approach to an obstacle placed along the centre line, a turn in towards an obstacle where the line sort of cut across a corner, a really tricky left-turn onto the following diagonal to jump two more obstacles, the combination down the length of the arena, a tricky right-turn to cut back across that corner for another go at the second obstacle and a slight change of direction towards an obstacle at the end of the diagonal.
Confused yet? I sure was, especially after watching the first group jump a different course. And you know what? It appears Murphy was confused too. When my turn came, I got him galloping at a nice speed, though not too fast as the first turn was fairly tight. I think I did it fairly well, though, but as soon as we turned up towards the first obstacle, I could feel something change in Murphy’s stride. And then he just stopped. Pretty much everyone in there were surprised. No one had ever seen him stop before, and my instructor didn’t think I had made any real errors. So, we figured he was just surprised, and tried it again. But ... no. He stopped again. Quite calmly, really, and I should have been quicker to react, to try to change his mind.
Figuring that he’d gotten confused, we put the rails down low, and walked him across it, then tried again. With the same darned result. Not sure why I didn’t react more strongly, as I normally don’t let horses get away with that kind of behaviour. But I was simply too surprised, I think, and the way he’d refuse was so peculiar, not at all like any other horse I’ve had that happen on. Then again, I haven’t had a horse refuse or run past an obstacle for a very long time, so I was probably out of practice when it comes to how to react. ;P Anyhow, that third stop did it for me, and the next time (after I had made sure he was galloping just fine and showing no signs of hurting anywhere, which I did worry about briefly) I rode him with a bit of extra decisiveness. No problem then. Silly horse.
Once past the first obstacle, we did okay on the second, and got a decent turn for the first diagonal. I did get a bit pushy, though, and had to work at keeping myself still on the approach to the combination. The first jump was so-so, but the second was pretty good. It was one of the higher obstacles, and he really seems to make more of an effort to get everything right then. Of course, with a fairly big jump, it made the turn back to jump the second obstacle backwards really tricky. I managed to keep him at a gallop through the right-turn (not easy), but I ended up coming at it from an atrocious angle, pretty darn close to being parallel with the obstacle instead of perpendicular to it. And that silly horse that refused three times when coming in pretty much dead straight on that first obstacle jumped it without any problem whatsoever. And thanks to that weird angle, we got a great line for the final obstacle.
My overall feeling about these three days is that it has been great fun, but I could have done a little better. However, jumping Murphy indoors in warmish weather and on courses with a lot of turns is anything but easy. That last turn, for example, was pretty appalling, but as my instructor noted I did very well to keep him cantering through that turn considering how poor his canter is unless you’ve spent a lot of time working on it that same class. I would love a chance to work him regularly though, to try to improve it some. I think it can be done.
Now, however, Murphy is on a well-deserved summer holiday, and I get to suffer riding (and Murphy) withdrawal for about six very long weeks. Like the past two days, he was in a big rush to get out, and didn’t see a problem with trying to walk across me to get out of the stables as quickly as possible. Fortunately, he failed to crush my foot today, and once outside he walked calmly and behaved himself perfectly well. He is, it seems, in much less of a rush to see Inca (that’s his girlfriend) than she is to see him. As soon as we’d let all the horses out, Inca (who was already out) came running straight for Murphy. They said a quick hello, and then she parked herself at his side. Terribly cute. Too bad Elio had walked off to wait by the other field with the camera. ;P He did take some during the lesson though, which I may try to get posted before we (probably) go off to Sundsvall on Sunday.