2023 & 2024 Riding Journey

#19 Lots of Jumping Cordell

So, this lesson we did more jumping, and we did even more of it than we'd done last time.  Probably the most jumping I've done in a lesson since last fall when I jumped Riggs.

I was wondering if we were going to jump because Friend and I were assigned the same horses as last time.  She got Mariah and I got Cordell.  Vivie wasn't there, but James was, and he rode Riggs.

After I'd mounted,  my trainer told me I could warm him up the way I saw fit and to come find her when I thought we were ready for some jumping.  She'd only say something to me if she thought she needed to, but otherwise, I was left to my own devices.

I knew my warm up needed to be fairly quick and also effective.  I started off in walk with doing some halts to make sure he was off my hand.  That went good, so I started doing some running walk with a couple circles sprinkled in each way.  That also went good, my trainer only spoke once to me to tell me that the running walk would be a little bit better if it was sped up a bit.  She also said she liked the fact that I looked for him to have a good rhythm instead of just adding speed.  I wasn't necessarily looking for that, but I was looking for a steady pace, so maybe that's about the same thing.  

I also cantered him each direction with one large circle per direction.  That all went good.  I walked him around just a bit more with some halts to make sure he was listening to me.  He wasn't as good as at the beginning, but he got better and so I went over to my trainer.

Friend finished up her warm up shortly after I did, and so it was onward to the jumping.  My trainer told us we were going to jump the same line we had last week, the telephone poles on a left bending line to the log standard jump.  If that went good, she would have us go to the right, and thus jump log standard first and then the telephone poles.  

Sure enough, going to the left was fairly easy.  I just had to make sure Cordell had enough impulsion and was going forward enough, but we didn't struggle with the line too much.  We jumped that maybe three or four times before my trainer lined us out on jumping this line to the right.

She said that this line was going to be different for some reasons.  One big one was that the first jump, the log standard one, was going to be a bigger one than the second jump, the telephone poles.  For Cordell, this meant that he might come to the telephone poles and be like, 'eh, it's small, why should I put that much effort into it?' and stumble his way over it.  I had to be ready to push him onward to it and say, 'no, you've got to put in some effort'.  

Also, for Cordell, this meant that he would jump the first jump bigger.  Thus he would land farther away from it than he did when jumping the telephone poles, and it would make the distance to the second jump slightly shorter.

Finally, there was, next the telephone poles, the tire jump.  If we were to miss the telephone poles, we could end up going over those and that was not what we wanted because it would mean jumping the tires.  Which was bad enough in itself, but it also meant we would jump those tires which were slanted towards us, and thus jumping that jump backwards from what was intended, which is not what you want.  Like jumping a jump with a ground pole on the wrong side, where the ground pole isn't.  It just wouldn't work.

My trainer had thankfully lowered the side of the log standard jump that we would be going over if we got our line right.  This encouraged the horses' to keep to the inside.

It was definitely different, and I could feel how Cordell would want to suck back from the smaller jump.  But if I pushed him on, we were alright.  

At one point in the middle of the jumping, I had to make a circle to wait for Friend to clear the line because Mariah ran out on the second jump.  Then I think she came back around to try it again and I just let her do it...  I think my trainer was also there by the jump so I had to make more circles?  I'm not sure, things are jumbled up in that memory.

I do know that because of something like that I ended up not taking the best line through.  It was messy, but we made it, though I had to apologize to Cordell because I hadn't set us up very well.  The next time through was better.  I think my trainer might've raised the jump and I didn't realize it that time because I was so focused on the line.

The next time around was better.  I think maybe that time I realized 'hey wait a second, she raised this!' but I'm not sure.  It all kinda gets mixed up when you're on the jump merry go round.

Once we had gone through that line and both done good, my trainer had us take a break for a moment.  She said something like 'Now I'm going to ruin y'alls' day' and proceeded to take the tires from the tire jump by the telephone poles and set them up against the telephone poles at a slant.  

She told us that both horses would look at it, and that we needed to be well back in our two point, almost sitting down, in case they stopped at it or took a huge leap over it.  She was fine with either jumping or stopping, but she did not want them running out / turning away from it.  They could stop straight at it, but no turning away from it and running out.  We also needed to be prepared for them to jump bigger.

Sure enough, we came around and Cordell  was already looking at even as we went over the first jump.  He wasn't sure enough about it and stopped dead in front of it.  Thankfully I'd listened to my trainer and was far enough back in my two point that, while I did get thrown forward a little, I didn't just plonk down on his neck or fall off.  I sat up a little, and he walked over it just fine.  After that, he was okay with it.

The next two times, he went over it, but the striding in between wasn't the funnest to ride.  It was awkward.  My trainer had me go over it one more time, because she said that there was three strides in there for him, but he was trying to figure out how to make it.

This last time was our best one.  I don't know if he made three strides, but I do know it felt smoother than the other attempts.  So I brought him down to walk.  My trainer said she was sorry but she'd missed it, did he make three strides?  I said I didn't know, but it'd felt a lot better.  Because I'd said it felt better, she assumed he'd probably made three strides, so we called it good on that.

She said that, if you went through the line straight and jumped the first one at an angle, you could easily make it a two stride on him.  But on a bending line, it'd be more like three for him.  Now, you could try for two strides, but they'd be long, rough feeling strides, so she could safely assume he'd made it in three.

She also complimented me on the fact that I was back enough in the saddle when he stopped that I wasn't pitched forward because of it.  She also said that, when we're jumping higher, we do want a horse to know that they are supposed to go over it unless it's too unsafe, but at lower levels of jumping, it's alright if they look at some things and figure it out.

Friend had done well at the jumping too with Mariah.  Mariah is such a good little jumper pony now!  We walked them out for the rest of the lesson to cool off and then called it good.  

Overall, it was an intense but fun lesson.  My trainer also said that Cordell is one of those horses that jumps better as the jumps get higher.  I think the world famous jumping horse Snowman was that way as well.  Cordell's really quite athletic.

Actual lesson 6/20/2023