Giving blogging another shot!

So, I am going to try and make myself blog once a week! I am not always good at sitting down and doing it, I do not think I am a great writer but you won't get better if you don't try, right? So bear with me haha.

So the horses are all don't competing for the season, they will get down time when we move to Southern Pines (about a month). Right now we are working on things that get away from us while we are competing. The fall is a great time to take a step back, look at what each horse needs to improve upon and work on it! We are doing a lot of gymnastics with all the horses, it is helping them with their foot work and is making them more responsible when it comes to jumping. We are setting them up so the horse has to do all the work without help from the rider. This allows the horse to make mistakes and learn from them on their own. I can't even explain how much this is helping all of my horses. When you are out competing you make all the decisions and help the horse out as much as you can, it is good to take a step back and make the horse more a part of the equation.

We have mostly been using trotting gymnastics with a combination of one strides and bounces in different orders. I like having the bounces further down the lines, it makes the horses have to be quick and really rock back and come up. If the horses would accelerate down the lines we would put in V poles to help back them off without the rider having to do it. The V's also help keep the horse straight, if a horse is still drifting we would put a placing pole on the ground on the side the horse was drifting to. The horse sees the pole and it helps keep them straight, again without the help of the rider. It is hard as a rider to sit there and do nothing, especially when you know the horse is messing up. It is so important to let the horse to figure it out. Obviously if the horse was really going to get into trouble we would help them but the jumps are small enough and we introduce the jumps gradually enough that they don't often get themselves into trouble.


After doing the gymnastic lines, when we take the horses to single fences, the horses seem to hold themselves off the fences better and pay a little more attention, in case there is another fence coming. I am excited at the progress the horses are making and I think it will make a big difference with them all competing next summer! Yay for good homework!