Today's ride on Comrade showed that last week's ride was not a fluke. I decided to take advantage of Mom being around and had a jumping session. You can hear Mom's comments at the link above. Mom was also amazed at his flexion, which was soft and easy. I noticed that he would give me a haunches in and out. We even played with walk pirouettes. This would have been torture before for both of us. Can I say again, bless joint supplements.
Considering the rest of our day did not go as planned, it was refreshing to have a great ride on Comrade. Now I have to learn how to ride the new, willing to move pony and find middle ground. This jumping session I actually had to ask him to slow down. The bad part was he took the request too far and was not making the distances. The video shows when we both started to figure out what we each needed to do the make the jumps work.
The straight line with two jumps was set as a 3 stride distance (9ft stride). He went from barely making that distance to needing the distance opened. My favorite moment comes almost at the end of the video. We do the two straight X's then go over the end X. Then I decided to give Comrade a challenge. During the session, I had turned right every time after the end X. I decided while going over the jump to turn left. He landed on the left lead and executed the roll back so well he surprised me. Comrade kept the canter and finished over the straight line.
At that point we ended the ride. He wanted to do more and was happy. Better to stop on a high note than to push for more.
 |
| Spring is here! Comrade after our ride:) |
No comments:
Post a Comment