Yesterday was a new puzzle for Bacardi & I. We spent yesterday evening introducing the idea of cross country style jumps and working outside.
It wasn’t the smoothest or most productive trainins session. Bacardi was very distracted by other horses being out in their pastures and running around and so lines were not clean and straight and sometimes it was an effort just to keep him underneath me and going forward.
But not all milestones are pretty and sometimes you have to ride through the ugly to get to the pretty. Our next steps are most likely going to be going out and working on the lunge line. Learning that just because other horses are running around, doesn’t mean we need to go with them. Being focused on me as the rider.
In a different facet of training, we have been working on confidence over bigger jumps. And mostly it has been my confidence. For whatever reason once I see a jump higher than my knees coming up, I freeze and therefore take confidence and impulsion from my green mount and he ends up refusing, which only furthers my fear. So we are slowly working through that as well.
But we are definitely making better progress in that respect.
I look forward to seeing how we progress through the rest of the summer.
Happy Riding!
A+B