JumpJump Pony

Almost as stylin' as Courage or Prisoner

Spring has come to Pennsylvania, and Dino and I got to enjoy the first day of 70+ degree weather riding and jumping with our friends! IN A T-SHIRT! I even killed a mosquito on Tuesday. Things are getting serious on the warm weather front.

Since we are resting our jump field until mid-April, I drug one solitary fence out to the top of the hill where I have been working lately. The footing down by the pond is also getting really good at this point in the season, too, but there ain't no way I'm hauling jumps down there.

See that yellow strip behind the brown field? That's my pond field. Wasn't hauling jumps down there. Nope. 

Without help or a truck to move standards and poles, one jump would have to do, and I set a 2'3 vertical on a spot of nice, level ground far away from gopher holes.

I got quite a pleasant surprise when both of my barn buddies showed up to ride as I was tacking up!

We all hopped on and rode down to the pond before having a rather exuberant trot and canter back up the hill to the spot where my lone jump was set up.

Dino was PUMPED to be jumping again! We haven't jumped at home since November, and it was awesome to be back at it, even if it was just over one little vertical. He was totally nailing it every time, snapping his withers up and really rocketing over. I played a little bit with coming in with different canters, but in general kept seeing & gunning for the longer distance instead of waiting to the base. We were both on the same page 90% of the time though, which was great.

My lonely jump.

I definitely do NOT have my sea legs back over fences, though, and found myself having to pull up and regroup before re-approaching the fence each time instead of just riding one fluid, continuous figure-8 over it. By the end of the ride my legs were definitely a bit weebly.

We finished by putting the fence up to 2'9" and jumping over that a few times, and Dino was absolutely spot-on perfect, and even after so much time off the height was no thing for me. I was really happy with our first at-home jump school of the year!

I made an off-hand comment as we all rode back to the barn that I needed to get my eye for a distance sorted out; I was disappointed that I kept seeing the long spot and over-riding the last couple strides. My friend looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and told me I didn't need to work on my eye, I need to IGNORE my eye! I sputtered ineloquently in response as I do when I haven't yet processed my own thoughts enough, and realized later that it wasn't my eye that needed fixing, it was the quality and adjustability of our canter.

Which are kind of the same thing, sometimes. The canter I was jumping out of was at times either too under-powered or too flat to make a closer, waiting distance work out, so I think we need to spend some time going back and forth in the canter and practicing all our different gears.

But for now, I'm just happy that we jumped!