Darting Out...

"Was that even worth refusing??!"

Exercise for December 8-15 is as follows:

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These are our "circle jumps." As is consistent with gymnastic good practice, start off with four trot poles placed in a circle; these were placed on a circle approximately 20 feet in diameter. The main focus of this exercise is to ask your horse to jump at a bend and to hit the middle of each jump on the circle. Once you have trotted the circle successfully, raise the poles to jumps. I recommend (based on Connie's advice) jumping these one at a time at the trot, then two at a time at the trot, then trotting all four jumps in the circle at once. If you feel you have enough control and consistency, go ahead and canter this in the same sequence: one jump, two jumps, entire circle. When changing direction, I repeat the one, two, four jump sequence.

Although I have done this exercise in the past, it was more difficult this time for three reasons: the diameter of this circle was smaller than what I have done in the past, Ruby is still not quite where I want her to be (fitness-wise), and Ruby HATES white poles (we are still working on that).

So what was the biggest lesson I learned riding this? Yeah, don't expect your horse to simply go over everything- STEER! Ruby is usually pretty good about going over the jump once I point her to it (as long as I have leg on), but she decided to run out on me this time...

What causes a horse to run out? STEERING ISSUES! If I had to choose between refusing and running out, I would prefer her to run out, since it means it is an issue with my riding and not a behavioral issue with her (as refusing usually is). Note to self: use leg AND hands. Ruby does not like when I "get in her  face," so I tend to keep my hands quiet.. too quiet.

Part one: Slamming on the breaks. At first I though she was going to flat out refuse the jump. This is actually pretty easy to "ride out"- just sit up!

 Part two: The dart. Ruby can be super quick and darting out to the side is always a pain in the ass. Again, force yourself to sit up and move with the horse (for me, this meant bracing with tons of right leg!). It's funny that I can be a lazy rider, but when something like this happens, my leg position is actually pretty decent.

 Part three: GET OVER IT! If your horse refuses or darts out like this, IMMEDIATELY take your horse right back over the jump- it doesn't have to be pretty, just get over it (a difficult concept to grasp for a perfectionist, but Connie has helped me learn how to handle these events really well). Ruby darted right (odd for her, she usually chooses to go left), and I circled her back to the jump. Technically, you want to circle the horse opposite the direction he/she darted, but I think I was so startled I just thought "YOU ARE GOING OVER NOW" and missed that point. Here we are going right back to it. As you can tell from my face, I was not pleased, but she did go over it with no issues the second time.

 "Calming poles:" I keep a series of trot poles in the ring at all times, in case Ruby starts to get strong. When cantering the circle, this is especially useful, as she has to come back to the trot after cantering the circle in order to get through the poles. The more we have to focus on, the better Ruby and I tend to do. Connie started us out with just these three poles, but added more and ended up using five.

Thanks to Dan, my amazing boyfriend, for getting these shots for me!