Not jumping for Joy today George!
Not a successful day today I'm afraid. Not what I needed at all. George was unsettled by the rain (as he always is), and uncharacteristically spooked badly at a toilet block that had been put by the arena entrance for a big competition at the weekend. Then he would not settle in the arena, and never gave me the bounce that we have come to expect of him when he is jumping. He had no joy in the job today.
I was not at my most positive, but that made no difference cross country last week, and I was worse then. Today he was going crooked, refusing to address the fences straight, failing to latch onto the fences, jumping flat and knocking them down time and again. On the plus side, he jumped. But there was so little joy in it for either of us that it felt rather like failure :-(((
Thinking back, it is Draycott since he jumped coloured poles really nicely. At Catton he hurdled them, and at Eland he went completely to pieces on a bad surface, but that could also have been partly that he was running at them. It may be that Eland scared him and this is the first time he has done coloured poles since Eland, but we gave him every chance to get his act together and nothing worked.
The rain, my own lack of confidence due to the arm and the Eland experience will not have helped. But I think, after the way he jumped last week, that what we have got on our hands is a horse who adores cross country and is trying to cross country showjumps too. He certainly would not slow up and bounce for me, he just kept lunging at them in a rush. This is a normal phase that lots of horses go through in learning to jump. Somehow I never thought George would go through it. I'm thinking of taking a pelham next time and seeing whether I can get him bouncing in that, because he's not right in a snaffle.
I wish it was better news, we all could have done with some in this weather!
C
posted by cptrayes @ 8:54 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
shame! you needed that confidence giver - as, apparently, did george. interesting to know you still have a niggle at the back of your mind about the arm, you're not as confident as you've been giving out! LOL.
and yes, she is a nice YO isn't she?
He's a little worrier deepdown isnt he!
Sounds like you have 100%confidence in each other with regards XC but show jumping isnt your favorite and doesnt sound like its Georges either.
Ive no idea about jumping but would grids help in this situation where he has to bounce.Maybe even give him a couple of goes loose if possible,see if he can work it out for himself?
We have over three weeks to play with stuff before Draycott. I've done an entry for Intro not PN so as not to push things too far. This is pretty normal - all my horses have done it sooner rather than later, but for some reason we never expected George to do it. We'll do some playing around at home on Friday and see what we can come up with.
C
Hate to sound like a broken record, but gymnastics so he can figure it out. He needs to learn how to jump without hurdling everything. And, I suspect, that once he figures it out, he will start to have fun.
Right now, he has no concept as to how to use his body in the tighter, more controlled approaches the arena demands.
You might try jumping him from the trot. Set up a cross rail (used to count off 8 paces for Russell) before a jump to set him up for the jump. Trot to the crossrail, jump and then the canter stride to the jump itself will be regulated. Trotting poles set before a fence the same way will help too. The idea is to set him up for success if he takes a more collected approach to the fence.
Go from there to combinations with well counted strides in between. If he rushes or flattens after the first fence, put a pole on the ground a stride away. It will make him naturally look down, round up, adjust his stride so as not to hit it, and set him up for the second fence. Poles on the ground really help a rushy horse.
Square oxers can help him from going too flat as will oxers to verticals and vice-versa.
All in all, you can really keep SH busy setting up some nice combos for you! *G*
I have absolute confidence in your ability to train George through this.
jean is the "wisdom voice" ^-^
I know C beleives in "natural training" , keep doing it and it will get better ... becaus she is an EXCELLENT horsewoman it does.
But for the less skills of us, we use gymnastics ..
poles grid, cavaletti etc ...
It works ^-^
Ask SH to set up some nice "percorso" in your outdoor school !
We tried trot Jean and he just would not come in straight in trot either. We didn't try placing poles, and we should have! Stuck in a rut and forgot the obvious simple things...
It's the flatwork that's lacking of course, and the gymnastics would help. Here come the buts - we are not allowed to move fences in the arena that we hire. Well we are, but we have to put them back again exactly as we found them and that's impractical in an hour without an army of helpers. I can't get much of a grid up at home in only 40 metres of arena, so I tend not to bother. If necessary, I will, but right now I think a little more control of his head will do the trick. I have an arena booked again for Friday where we can test my theory :-))
It's not natural training to keep doing it if it doesn't work Muriel :-)))) I do get stuck in a rut too easily!
I've had time to mull things over now and I can see that this has nothing to do with my arm. It was partly the rain, and mostly a progression on a very linear path from just before we took him to Catton. It's a very common thing with my horses (I assume with others too, but I don't know!) that they get cocky after a few months showjumping and try to take over. Unfortunately George is, as Nicola points out, a sensitive beast and he has been cocky but also scared himself by hitting poles.
I don't think this will take too much to cure, but I'm a little anxious about how little there is left of the season to get it right. Of course that anxiety will have to be put aside if we'r egoing to make it work!!!
C
Even a combination of a low cross rail and then a jump will help. Or, trotting poles and a jump at home. It's just a matter of repetition for him now. If you set something up on the diagonal of the 40 m arena, it gives you room for the set up trot poles to the jump.
In the rental arena, the trot poles will help and again, if you have a line with a combination, that pole on the ground should set him back a bit from the flattening and rushing. Moving poles isn't TOO bad, and they're equally easy to clean up without moving the fences themselves.
And, you can just warm up using the trot poles to get him used to the concept. They'll help him steady his trot a little too. You can also set up the poles at canter stride distance to regulate his canter into the fence.
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