Thursday 4 October 2012

The Bounce

Well, it finally happened.  Walker and I actually jumped a crossrail.  I was pretty impressed (mostly that he didn't faceplant like he almost did on the lunge line the other day).  I kept moving the crossrail up until finally I got a little bounce out of him.  And I would have to say that it was more of a bounce than a jump, and although we went over the crossrail several times at the trot, he only actually "jumped" it twice.  It didn't take him very long to figure out that he has really long legs and if he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to jump that either.  This was the problem with the smaller crossrails, but today I had the crossrail up as high as it would go on the little cavaletti (2 feet on either side), so I guess that will have to do.

I also practiced loping over some poles, and I even loped him over an elevated pole.  I started him very low though, just barely 6 inches off the ground, and I felt that he didn't really need to jump it.  He simply paid attention to his striding and I barely noticed when we went over it, which impressed me.  I'll move it up a couple more notches next week, and someday soon, I'll lope him over the crossrail.  But I figured that trotting him over it was a good start, especially since he was pretty tired by the end.

I tried to trot him over a vertical standing about 1'3" or 1'6" but he lost his nerve as we approached it, came down to a walk, and slammed the vertical to the ground.  I was going to take him around and try again, but I decided that maybe I did too much too fast (trotting low crossrail, trotting high crossrail, loping poles, loping low but elevated pole).

Frankly, I'm pretty happy with him.  He's not naturally gifted, that's for sure, but he tried his best for me and gave me nice little bounce.  Maybe there's a jumping career in our futures after all, however limited that may be!

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