A Week Late Weekend Recap- Grids and Courses

After my long winded flat work post I'm sure you guys are like geez there's more??? Well Yes. There is. Though I'm going to do my best to keep it brief and filled with pictures and videos instead of words.

Becks and Finn. I don't think I've ever seen him jump with his nose out- he's just that strange I guess...

Pony Club Winter Camp
***Pictures are from the group before mine. Becks and Finn were in the group and I got a few good pictures of them but better ones of the other kids. Figures that I'd have bad camera timing when Becks was riding!****

Grid Work

Last jump in the grid

On Sunday we had two lessons and in the first one we worked on some grid work. First jump was a skinny flower box that made us keep the horse between our leg and going straight. It was a particularly scary flower box and had really tall wispy fake grass coming out of the top with red tall flowers instead of the normal short bunchy flowers you see. This caused all of the horses to stop because it was something they've never seen before. Chimi trotted up and then went "THOSE AREN'T NORMAL WHAT DO I DO?!?!?!?!" I let him look at them and after that he never blinked an eye at them. So note to self I need really weird flower arrangements to school at home...

After the flower box we moved on to the grid. The grid wasn't anything over the top or complicated but was very helpful to develop the canter we wanted in our course work that afternoon. It consisted of a flower box bounce to an X, 1 stride to a vertical, and then 2 strides to an oxer. So it went trot approach, bounce, 1 stride, 2 stride, canter away. This was a perfect grid for everyone's level of fitness in the middle of winter. Chimi was perfect through the grid every time though he was really bad about wanting to canter in instead of trot. He always prefers to canter jumps and in the past I've let him do what he wanted because we were working on building his confidence not dictating how he should jump. Now that he's much more confident in his jumping I need to start saying "Hey! We're suppose to trot this!" More homework for us...

Course Work

For the afternoon lesson we expanded upon the grid and worked on some course work. After warming up over the no longer scary flower box and a vertical we started piecing together a course. It ended up being a really long course which was great except there was a lot to remember! Plus it was exhausting and further reminded me I need to really work on my fitness before show season starts! I was really happy with how Chimi did with the long course and we only had a mishap when we tried the in and out for the first time. This is where Chimi's greenness/confidence issues come in. I don't think I've done a 1 stride in and out with him before, especially one with lots of filler (gates, flower boxes, etc) and when we came around the corner to the in and out he panicked and was like "holy crap I don't understand! I don't understand! What do I do, I don't understand!" and thus I barely managed to squeeze him over the first jump and no way in hell were we going to make it over the 2nd. In hindsight I should of brought him down to the trot and let him look at what we were about to jump. But instead I kept him cantering and thus caused the mini panic attack. Jamie lowered the back jump for him and he made it over the 2nd time. And then later on in the course when we did the same in and out backwards he didn't even care. I just have to remember to take it slow with him and get lots of confident building milage on him. There is no skipping steps with this guy!

The course started and ended with the gymnastic we'd worked on that morning. This was so we could establish the correct canter before the course and to end on a nice canter. To save time I edited out the part where I turned the wrong way after the brick jump and the part right after the refusal. Otherwise there would of been a lot of boring trotting around as I navigated my way back to the jumps. Snooze. So here you guys go- the course!



So that about covers the week late weekend recap. Overall was really happy with how Chimi did and know we have a lot to improve on. But he's getting better every day and that's all I can ask for!