Spurs and Serpentines

It's always a good weekend when Jonna is in town, and this weekend was better than ever.

Henry and I have  been working hard at home as always and I was feeling like we had everything under control and needed a new challenge. There was nothing I could think of that I thought needed much work, we just needed to start the next step in our training.

I told Jonna exactly that in our debrief and he suggested we start working on half pass. We gave it a go in walk and it wasn't too bad. That's when Jonna asked me if I has spurs. I do but I have never used them on Henry. I've never had to! Jonna told me I need more refinement of my aides now and I need to get a pair of roller spurs to start progressing lateral movements. I don't think I have ever been so excited!

We moved on to jumping pretty quickly and there was a serpentine of three jumps set on the centreline. Jonna asked what I expected to happen and I thought we would manage left to right easily but not the other change.

I was so wrong! Henry did find the change right to left harder but he nailed the exercise in our second run through! We repeated it a handful of times, and when things went well and I got the flexion to the new leading leg in self carriage before the jump we landed correctly. It took a lot of work to set him up so that’s where we need to work now, self-carriage in flexion.

Bec made the comment that I was riding well, and I really felt it too. I was sitting up, making decisions early, getting a good canter, staying with my horse and feeling very confident. Things are really clicking for us right now.

To finish, I had bought my butterflies from home to test Henry's confidence over fill. He doesn’t care about them at home, but I wanted to know if he is starting to generalise things more. They were set under the middle fence and we just did the single jump on it’s own, but included a change of direction too.

Jonna predicted he would give a nice shape over the fence since we had made it bigger and added fill, and he did, It felt so lovely! We even got the correct lead both ways. Success all round.

We finished the session there, and Jonna reiterated that I now need to drill the lateral movements more. I also need to school on the flat in my jump saddle, and work on getting self-carriage in flexion, which will help with the lateral movements.

I was so stoked with this lesson. I have been working really hard to get Henry stronger and straighter and it showed, he was the only horse all day to get the serpentine right.

I am also pretty thrilled to go spur shopping this week. I mean shopping is fun but it’s like I can see out next step, all the doors are open and it is so exciting! I never thought we would be here!