I jumped my horse today.
I jumped my horse today, for the first time in five(ish) months. I jumped my horse today, outside, for the first time since we moved barns in January. I jumped my horse today and he didn’t buck a single time. I jumped my horse today and he didn’t rush the fences. I jumped my horse today and we actually had brakes when we landed. I jumped my horse today and we actually put together a small course without being a total disaster. I jumped my horse today and my trainer was so happy with him that she gave him cookies afterward. I jumped my horse today and the little voice in the back of my head telling me that it was going to be a disaster was proven wrong.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t anywhere near perfect. Our canter is better, but it’s not string-a-course-of-fences-together better (although he did throw in a flying lead change at one point, so there’s that). He ran out coming into our first fence after a walk break because I hadn’t done a good enough job of waking him back up before we approached. I’m antsy and tense because (as we’ve established) jumping makes me nervous these days, and I didn’t know how he would be over fences after his performance exam at the end of February—he’s been feeling miles better since then (I’ll talk more about it another time) but it can be hard to say how he’ll react to some things when he’s feeling especially good about himself—and that meant I chased him to a couple of jumps, but: it was good. It was a massive improvement over the last time we jumped, a massive improvement over my last jump lesson with my trainer, and just all around what we (I) needed.
He’s come so far in the last few months. Saturday will be three months since we moved, and soon it’ll be three months since I got him into our twice-weekly lessons (delayed due to his shoe-throwing antics, of course), and it’s like I have an entirely different horse underneath me, even since this time last month. He’s still honest, and smart—too smart for his own good, probably, but my trainer said it’s fun watching him because she can see it in his eyes when it clicks for him what we’re asking him to do—and he does a great job taking care of me (even if he does like to throw a good spook in there every now and then), but he’s so much more respectful of my leg now. He’s so much more respectful of the bridle. He’s not hanging on me and expecting me to carry his front end around (mostly. We’re still having that discussion on the left lead). He actually bends and shifts his weight and changes when we change direction. His head carriage is lower overall, so he’s not traveling around like an inverted giraffe anymore, and he’s started to engage his back more consistently. Last week my trainer commented that he’s finally separated his hind feet at the canter and is doing a true three beats.
All of these things are so basic. They’re all fundamental building blocks for a good riding horse. I lament the fact that I didn’t train him well enough on them myself, but what I’m learning through this process is how much we have to retrain and train me. I had some awareness of that before, but every ride it makes more sense. Every ride I unlock something else, and wonder why I was worried about doing it before, or how I could have ever forgotten how to do it, but… that’s just a combination of less-than-ideal training for a number of years, followed by a number of years of me on my own riding essentially nothing but young, green horses. As my trainer says, it’s hard to know what “right” feels like if you’ve never actually gotten to feel it before.
She got on him a couple of weeks ago, mostly because she’s only ever sat on him for about five minutes after he dumped me last year and she wanted to make sure that what she thought she was seeing during our lessons was what I was actually feeling, and it was interesting to watch. He was extremely confused, because he’s only ever had my best friend actually ride him one time and has otherwise had my trainer on him once for five minutes and one of the students at my last barn walk him around for ten minutes while I had some (polite but firm) words with her horse about something, so he spent the first five minutes side-eyeing me, but then they really got into a discussion about bending and accepting the leg and the difference between forward and lateral cues (which he knows, but does he always remember? Definitely not). When I got back on twenty(ish) minutes later… he had an entirely different level of understanding, because she’s just that much better at asking the right questions of him.
(She did, however, learn that, for all it doesn’t look like it from the ground, he would absolutely dive into the right rein when you asked for the left lead and immediately take away any bend or softness to the left. You could obviously see the change in bend but he never looked like he was hanging on the reins to anywhere near the degree that he actually was and she gained an understanding of why I’ve needed to shake my arms out periodically during lessons, lol. As a result of that, we spent our next few lessons really focusing on not letting him take the left rein away to dive into the right at the canter and thus force him to maintain the left lead and left bend. We’re still working on it but he’s doing a ton better already.)
He’s so much easier to ride these days. He’s never been difficult, in that he really isn’t the stereotype of the hot OTTB (most days, anyway) and he figures most things out damn quick (standing at the mounting block? Fifteen minutes and a couple of cookies one day. Cross-ties? Understood the assignment the moment I put him on them. Ditches? Walk through it once and then we’re good to trot over it nice and quiet), but he wasn’t simple. We couldn’t trot around on the loose rein and maintain pace without me offering him a ton of help. We had to work and work and work for our canter transitions. I’d trust him with anyone at the walk (not that I’d trust anyone with him), but faster than that…
Today he was half-asleep when I hacked him down to the outdoor. He trotted around on a loose rein, and he wasn’t entirely through (again, still working on that), but he was soft and bending and not running through my fingers. Moments where he rushed were my own fault for getting nervous and cueing him to do so. I do still have to ask for us to slow down at the canter, but the half-halt is largely installed at the trot and the canter just needs practice and strength to install it there too. He waited and got in to the base of most of the jumps as long as I didn’t tip my upper body forward, and he jumped them properly instead of long and flat, even though they were all below 2’6″ where he doesn’t have to actually try. My trainer kept saying how much better he looks and how much of an improvement it was over the last time she saw him jump, and it’s true.
The horse I jumped today is the horse that I need to jump. The horse I jumped today went. The distances weren’t always perfect, but most of them were decent enough, and even when we took a long spot into one fence, I saw it coming and I was ready for it and I didn’t catch him in the mouth over the jump. I’m sure I was micromanaging somewhat—I know I was—but it’s not like before. It’s not like my last experience with lessons, where I got pointed at fences that were higher than my brain was comfortable with and told to jump them, where it wasn’t about the quality of the trot or canter but instead about getting the right distance and the right number of strides, where I was so worried about those things that we never got in correctly because I always got in the way, which only made me more worried, continue ad infinitum.
That’s really what makes me nervous. It’s not the thought of falling off that makes me nervous (truly. I’m sticky. Cooper’s only gotten me off twice and I was averaging one fall every four years before that since I started riding again after my accident). It’s the thought of messing up my distances again and again and again, screwing my horse over and giving him—them—a bad jump, making it uncomfortable and nerve-wracking for everyone, that makes me nervous. It seems a little bit ridiculous, the fact that I’m scared of bad distances more than the thought of falling off or whatever else, but it’s the truth.
I didn’t grow up that way. I never grew up counting strides (I mean, sure, we’d walk related distances, but that was about it). I never grew up looking for a distance. I grew up being taught (by my trainer, love that) to find the canter and then stay out of the way. That didn’t mean don’t be there to help, or drop them at the base, or anything like that. It just meant set them up, find a balanced canter that gives them options, keep your leg on as support, and let them find their own distance. It won’t always be a perfect distance (it definitely won’t always be perfect), but when they can find their own spot rather than you throwing them at it, it really does ride better. Sometimes it’s long and sometimes it’s short, but I grew up being taught to let my horse find their distance and let them be the one to tell me when to get out of the tack. Being asked to fit in exactly seven strides to a single vertical rather than setting my canter and letting that dictate how many strides I got just… messed with my brain a bit, I guess, and it went poorly enough enough times that it’s embedded in there at this point.
Tonight wasn’t an immediate fix. None of the times that I’ve jumped Cooper have been an immediate fix (though this was certainly the best of them). What tonight was, was a building block. It was one block toward building back the base that I used to have, toward trusting that my horse will go as long as I’m there, trusting that he’s not going to dirty-stop on me or charge the fences, trusting that as long as I sit up there and don’t chase him and breathe, we’re going to get around just fine. My trainer isn’t going to hike fences up and throw us over them, and she’s not going to judge me if my brain just won’t play along with something. We’ll just do what we do with Cooper every time we teach him something new—break it down into pieces, make him (me) comfortable doing each piece, and then put things back together until we get to where we want to go.
I’ve still got a lot of work to do—we’ve still got a lot of work to do—but week after week, it gets better. Tomorrow we’ve got a visit from the saddle fitter, who will hopefully be able to bring my monoflap back from its solitary confinement (my trainer thinks she can, it probably just needs to be reflocked and maybe a tiny tree adjustment, but we’ll see), and will also be checking the dressage saddle that I’m going to be buying from another boarder as long as she signs off on the fit at the end of our appointment. Wednesday we have another lesson (and I’m hoping the rain stays away til afterward, I like being outside), and then Coops will probably get most of the weekend off because Thursday weather is supposed to be gross, I’m grooming for my trainer at a show Friday and Saturday, and Sunday is Easter (and also chiro and acupuncture day for him). A few days off won’t hurt him, though. He’s been working hard since we moved (and he got his damned shoes put back on).
I’m not sure what our plans are going to be for this spring and summer. My trainer and I are in agreement that he needs at least two training rides while I’m in Kentucky at the end of this month (mostly because I’ll be gone for five days and he can’t be trusted to be left to his own devices for that long), and then she wants to get us out to some local dressage schooling shows at some point, plus some cross-country schooling, and we’ll probably aim for a mini trial or two later in the summer, depending on how he’s doing.
He really does love to be an overachiever, though, so who knows what’s coming when.
Spymaster Equestrian 