Will Murray Simulated XC 16.02.2020

Everyone kept asking me if I was nervous, but strangely enough, I wasn't...not even for the travelling bit! I expected the nerves to kick in once we went into the indoor and saw the jumps but even when Carlos nearly had a heart attack and ran away from some fillers and poles on the ground it thankfully didn't faze me.  I've never been a confident jumper so I was finding it pretty strange. 

Although the lesson was over show jumps the idea of it was to create the technical combinations you'd find out on the cross country course.  This included bounces, skinny fences, ditch and a combination of fences strung together. 

Carlos started off with his usual spooky self, thankfully I wasn't the only one in the group this time how needed things simplified and the girl in front of me had a refusal for the first fence we tried so Will had us go over it first half on the ground, which I didn't expect Carlos to be as much of a wimp with that but he still had a big look at it.

Once they were confident from both directions with the jump as a normal straight bar we jumped that again and then had to turn left into another fence off on an angle.  Carlos had a big look at this but he jumped it from an almost standstill.  We then had to come back over the first fence and carry on with another that was off to the right this time.  Thankfully Carlos had no issues with that.  Because of his look at the second jump Will had us come around and jump the combination again which Carlos jumped very well.   

Then we had a bounce introduced, Will simplified this but Carlos thankfully barely looked at it and popped on through.

Listening to our next instructions 

After that came the big test.  Even though throughout the lesson we stood amongst the jumps to be other the way of others Carlos didn't like going too close to the fences of a batch of poles on the floor.  Will said to allow our horses to look at them if we felt it was needed...I did but I also didn't want to get into a fight with him for just taking a look.

Straight away Will simplified it as the rider in front of me had issues, so once we came to it the first filler was taken off, the second element was the 'ditch' which was a bunch of 5 black and white poles together which then lead off to a filler which had also been dropped at one side.

Straight away Carlos backed off and I just couldn't get him in front of my leg in trot so when he got to the 'ditch' he stopped and ran backwards.  Will spent probably a good five minutes with me working out ways so I could win the situation.  Eventually, Will took the first two poles away making them smaller and I managed to get him over them but he stopped straight away at the filler.  I wrapped my leg on and he popped over it. 

I kept getting wrong off Will for saying 'good boy'  even though I was rewarding him for going forward which is what we were aiming for, Will said it could make him think he's done what he needs to do and make things worse so not to reward him until we were over all three.  Going to find that hard but will try to remind myself of that. 

As I cantered back around, Will snuck the two poles that he'd taken away back into the 'ditch' and Carlos didn't even notice.  So he popped the filler up at the end to the cups and we jumped that with only a slight hesitation.  Then he popped the first filler on for us all and we all had to get it simplified again.  Silly horses. 

After the confidence was built up with the first filler back on both cups we all had a course to complete ourselves.  Carlos was super and felt like he was really enjoying it although he did land on an incorrect leg twice and I had to do a transition back down to trot then back to canter so it didn't feel as smooth as it could I was absolutely over the moon with him!  Will is an excellent instructor for helping out young/green horses.

Todburn arena hire 05/02/2020

So yesterday I took Carlos along to an arena hire which had an arena eventing course set up.  I thought it would be a good chance to see what he would be like since I've yet to really give him a proper jump and knowing from my grid work clinic he was taking advantage of me pretending to be scared I now know to ride him differently and wanted to test it out ready to do some showjumping soon.

I made sure I had my whip with me but once we got over the first few a friend who also hired with me seemed to need it more so I let her borrow it.  He gave everything a look as we approached it but I rode him into them defensively and he got the point that I was planning on getting over them whether he liked it or not so he started going nice and forward with little hesitation. 

As we tried our first water trap he popped over it with the pole on the floor with no issues at all, as we approached it the first time with the pole up he hesitated but still jumped it however when the first jump and last jump were put back up as jumps (it was set up as a triple and we had the poles down, to begin with) he knocked the first jump and refused the water jump.  After having the pole put half down so I could push him straight over it we approached again which jumped fine.  After that, we approached again and he took me by surprise tanking off into it, leaving me with very little control.  He hit the pole on the first fence and ran out at the second leaving me flying off him and going splat onto of the jump wing with Carlos looking down at me.

After that however he jumped some even scarier fences with the xc fillers underneath so overall I am over the moon with him.

Here's a little video of our session including the fall haha -