Now We're Cookin'

Walker's mane - I was hoping it would be long and flowy before Spring
so that I could cut it and know what his wild side looked like.
Instead, it's just scraggly and the scissors will be coming out soon

I didn't go out to the barn on Thursday like I normally do because I really had to get a handle on the state of my apartment.  I was sick all last week and busy all this week.  There was no food to speak of, everything was dirty, and I really just had to have a night to sit down and organize my life.

Today I decided that we would work on my jump position.  After I warmed him up a little bit, we set up some crossrails and went over them a couple of times.  Then, for my own pleasure, I decided to see if Walker could/would jump a 2 foot vertical.  Can I just say that my horse is a saint?  The first time we went over it, I definitely caught him in the mouth, added no extra leg, and was pretty much an uncoordinated monkey on his back.  He asserted his opinion of this by stopping the next two times I asked him to try it.  Luckily, they were by no means "dirty" stops - more like "hell no, you crazy" stops.  Then the last time, he graced me with a nice little jump and I tried to reciprocate by, you know, being more helpful.

I wish his body wasn't swung away from me, otherwise it would've
 made a better conformation shot

I have to say that I was pretty proud of him.  And now that I know that he can/will jump that high, I have something to work towards, and we can go back to our crossrails!  He definitely knocked the poles each time, but he was pretty exhausted by then.  I have faith that even if he never has the talent to do a full course at that height, he may be able to jump a little higher at least once or twice in a row (dare I say, 2'6?).  But I digress.

I took some video of our jumping today, and I managed to upload it online.  Fair warning though: I don't know why, but youtube added a green streak along the bottom of the video which is wildly distracting.  I also suggest turning the sound off.  I couldn't figure out how to do that on my own, but all you will hear in the background is hooves and my occasional lung-hacking cough.  For the record, my video camera works fine.  It's my lovely dying laptop which can't seem to handle videos of any kind.  At least I got it uploaded - for the first time ever!  Sigh.

Can't pull a fast one on Walker!
He always has to be the centre of attention.  And he usually is

Anyway, if you can manage to bear through the video (really, the green is the most distracting thing in the world), you will see at the beginning how he likes to pick up a canter closer to the jumps, but as he grows tired, he stops doing that.  At the end of the video, he just trots them.  This is pretty much how our lessons go as well.  I didn't set up any trot poles today because I wanted to work on other things, but I definitely think I'm going to start incorporating more poles before the jumps to see if I can stop him from doing this.

Also, keep in mind that I have had approximately 3-4 official jump lessons, and my position/form is trash.  I'm sure another thing you will notice is how low Walker's head is.  My instructor is afraid that jumping will undo his Western Pleasure training, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.  It doesn't seem to bother him to trot/canter into the jump hanging his head low, and I can't seem to convince him that this is not a good idea.  You should also know that this is the highest his head is ever at.  Oh well.  At least he's trying.