I will admit, I do need to start doing more pole work & canter poles with him to get myself used to feeling his stride, and for him to learn not to rush into every fence that he can see! The last few weeks I have been focusing a lot on his flat work, his basics in walk trot & canter getting him moving forward and being responsive to my aids, with that in mind I think it is finally time to step it up a notch.
When I am on my own, I tend to tense up quite a bit and drop my shoulder on my approach to fences, often letting go of the contact to soon cause Dante to loose balance and to get sloppy. I think it is more of a case, that I haven’t grasped him yet when it comes to jumping,
Tip: Keep their minds thinking all the time, if you are jumping and feel that your horse is anticipating the fences, or beginning to rush off on you, change the exercise for 5 minutes, do 2-3 20 meter circles in trot and get them listening to you again before approaching the fencesagain.
towards the end of the session he started to veer towards the right of the second fence as it was turned into a spread with a bit more height on it, so we placed V poles up to assist him with his straightness, it helped but needless to say he started to jump the fence a foot higher than it already was!!
Hope you enjoyed! I will definitely be keeping you all up to date on our jumping, head over to our Instagram account for even more videos & pics!!
Darielle
#Neigh&Slay
It sounds like Dante is quite the Jumper! I ride an OTTB with a long stride and he tends to take the jumps long and high as well so he doesn’t catch his feet. We had a bit of a scare over the winter where we were coming in to slow and we almost somersaulted over a jump. (We luckily caught each other). Since then I’ve been building my confidence on him and have been counting our strides over cavaletti. Confidence. It really does make a huge difference.
Confidence plays a huge part!!! Dante & I have had really bad falls were we had both fallen, and both walked away unharmed! I have been spending a lot of time on his flatwork, getting him slightly more balanced and it seems to be paying off!! Slow & Steady is really the key with him