Wizard Ride 163: Expecting to Fly

Thursday, 7/29/10

Another sticky, sticky summer day in New Jersey. I rode early in the day, so it was a little cooler, but by the time we were done, we were both quite sweaty. We warmed up in the small dressage arena, working on transitions within the gaits, serpentines, and our first-ever canter in the small arena. Wizard’s self-carriage has improved so dramatically that he can handle much smaller spaces for cantering. He did break into a trot in one corner and it took a few times to strike off the correct lead, but once we were rolling, it was really nice.

We moved on to some work over little fences. We had not done any jumps in a while, so I had all sorts of fun ideas in my head. We started out trotting over some trot poles to loosen up his topline and so I could get my position where I wanted it. We then moved on to a little exercise of a trot pole, then a cross rail, then a landing rail. The rails were about 6 or 7 feet before and after the jump to help him learn distances and for me to retrain my eye. It’s been a while since I jumped with any regularity :^P

Wizard did the exercise beautifully, trotting in, taking the X, and bouncing out over the final rail. We moved on to a line of two fences, a cross rail to our first-ever “real” vertical. I made the mistake of trusting the distance between the fences, but it was a little funky since we were trotting in to the X and cantering to the vertical. Wizard handled it gamely, though, and took the long distance… and… WHEEE! He flew. Knees up to his eyeballs, back rounded, he jumped the jump like a true Thoroughbred. We took the vertical a few more times. Once, he hit the rail with his hind leg, but every other time, he felt great. It was a wonderful schooling experience.

On the first approach, my position is defensive and not soft- I’m not expecting the huge leap or the long distance.

On the second approach, my release is better and Wizard appreciates it and is rounder to my following hand. But I got ahead of him and I’m not as balanced as I was in the first frame.