Confirmed puddle jumper!

Some days horse riding is tough, and some days everything comes together and you have the best day ever. This weekend was definitely the latter for Henry and I am bursting with excitement and pride.

For our cross country lesson we headed down to Oakford and I wasn’t sure exactly what was in store for us. Our last XC school was not a disaster as such, but sheep really put us off our game. I wanted a more productive session and I also knew that Jonna would want me to come up with a plan.

We started out at the water and after walking though it once, I warmed Henry up a bit and then trotted into a small upright show jump at the water edge. Jonna wanted to test the horse’s reaction and training to the water. I knew this would be a big challenge for Henry, he is fine with water but a show jump before the water boggles his brain. So we trotted in, and Henry stopped and I very nearly went for a swim! However I refuse to fall off in the water and I refuse to fall off at the first jump so I kept myself in the saddle, back Henry up and trotted in again. He jumped right over and we got on with the rest of the session.

We repeated the same exercise a few times, then added in a second fence and jumped the line the other way so we jumped out of the water. That was all super easy so we moved to the second water complex to train different questions. Henry went right into the second water and after walking off the little bank I knew I needed to jump down into water as our next step.

We set Henry up by walking up to the log into water and letting him sniff it. He was pretty nonplussed by it and then I reversed a couple of steps, turned him round, picked up canter and came in. He jumped right down and it was just that easy! Then we needed to jump off the bigger bank into water.

To set us up for that we had a run through a bank without water, then into the jump into water, up the big bank, turn around and trotted right off the big bank. As you can imagine it was easy peasy, I looked up, closed my legs, slipped my reins and in we popped.

I incorporated the water into a course before we moved onto the next area of the course. It went so smoothly, it felt easy and I think we made it look easy too!

We tackled banks next and Henry was a dream again. So we built a course pretty easily and I included a few larger fences the only feedback I needed was to show jump an upright solid fence more, so I repeated it and it went much better.

I don't care that it's a crap picture, I am proud of us!

To finish the session I headed into the paddock with all the really big jumps. It ca be hard to find something in between to jump at this venue, but luckily I had eyes on the ground to help and we put together a course. The first few jumps I needed more impulsion, but I fixed it before we got to the big fence, then brought him back to show jump the brush jump. I needed him even more collected for the brush so I repeated it again and it went quite well.

On that very positive note we were done! I was even left wishing we had tackled some more big stuff, but also we jumped some of our biggest fences to date so I wasn’t complaining!

Henry is feeling very confident, adjustable and happy right now. He is so ready for me to keep upping the challenge and he finds it easy! He makes it feel easy and he gives me endless confidence now. It’s hard to believe that 12 months ago we were barely jumping logs! He isn’t a green baby anymore and I am so excited for our season. I have a feeling our 65 start is going to be a bit easy now…