Today I started looking though all my jumping books. The kimberwicke was working great and it was time to try it on another level. i have two books that I regularly turn to: 101 Jumping Exercises and Gymnastic lines. The lucky winner was 101 jumping exercises. I am a little ow on jumps right now and needed to use a few cinder blocks, trashy I know, but hey it works. While I was loading up my "jumps" I found a piece of plywood, just big nough to make a skinny coop. WONDERFUL! Something new. We haven't attempted anything new in awhile. So I dragged all my finds to the field and started counting paces. 18" vertical and 48 ft out I put the coop. Enough strides to slow him and turn him away if I needed to. I want to add that I changed Olly's feed like 2 weeks ago and found that his attitude is much better. He is more calm, I still think we needed the bit change, it was a combo effort. I took exercise 27 and 47 and kind of combined them. Exercise 47 is just an extention of exercise 27.
I set up my jumps like 47, but rode 27. Stay with me, it sounds confusing, but you will soon understand.
After riding exercise 27 a few times, I rode it again with the coop on the end instead of the circles.
Next, we rode exercise 47 as it was intended. First to the right a few times and then to the left. It was set in the book for the two jumps to be a bounce. Olly's bounce is usually 12 feet. Today I set it at 14 feet. I thought that he may need the extra two feet to compensate the turn or "drift" to the right/left. It took him a few times to get the idea, but I hung in there. He never refused and he never knocked down a jump. After three times though he took the right take off and lead. On to the left side...this side was easier. He totally understood what we were doing and tackled it perfectly, leads and all.
In between going though the lines we practiced controling our tempo and postition-without sturrips. Olly is getting better at relaxing himself and trying to focus.
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