Lisa's Blog post # 24

Lesley gave me the boot – she completely kicked me out of the nest!  

She schooled us over just about every small fence in the XC field, one at a time, both directions.  Our first two jumps were refusals (see below) but after that it all went very well!  We trotted very forward.   After the 20’ take off marker I moved my hands up on his neck to let the reins get loopy.  I grabbed mane upon take-off.  Cotton seemed a little surprised that we were jumping at first, and he was cautious of my hands, so I had to leg him on right before take-off a few times.  After we got going, however, he began to get a little “competitive”, as Lesley said, and began cantering more of his take-offs and getting a little eager.  I had to slow him before the next couple of fences and keep my hips well back during the take-off zone.  He settled down again - I was beginning to get the hang of it! (key word “beginning”)

I was ready to call it a successful day when she said “OK, now let’s do a course.”  Oh no, no way!  Jumping Cotton required a completely different skill set than what was deeply embedded in my mental and physical nature and I wanted to process all of it slowly and carefully.  I was only beginning to get the hang of it, remember?! 

“But you won’t be there telling me what to do!  You’ll be way over here!  What if I do something wrong?!”  I felt like a 4-year old being dropped off at the nursery.  “Lesley, you’ve got to trust me on this, I’m not ready!” 

“No, you need to trust me!  I can’t be holding your hand!  You’ve got to do this on your own!  I wouldn’t tell you to do something that you weren’t ready for.”  She meant business.

 I wish I had a video of our verbal exchange – I’m sure it would be funny… now.

I asked her for a moment to compose my thoughts.  I trotted off, jumped our first fence, trotted back and argued with her some more.  Really?  She didn’t budge.  I ended up doing the course.  Everything turned out fine.

In the end, the thing that won me over is when she said I could go slow.  I have heard that, supposedly, part of the fun of XC is that feeling of being slightly out of control – galloping at speed, jumping on the fly, going for it.  I’m not there yet!  I at least want to go at a controlled speed as I’m aiming toward an immoveable object, out in a wide-open field, with absolutely no contact on an eager horse’s mouth. 

This bubble bit is necessary so I can settle him down between jumps but if I use it at all within the take-off zone it really bothers him.  I am just not used to that emptiness in my hands – to me, during those last few strides before the jump he may as well not even be wearing a bridle!  Thankfully I don’t use the reins for physical stability over jumps (do I?!) but I have obviously been using them for mental stability.  There’s that 4-year old in the nursery again – this time with her security blanket!   

P.S.  (Lesley determined that he was popping over those fences last time, and refused the first two fences this time, because I was holding his mouth – the reins seemed loose to me!)  

Maybe I need to be lunged over some fences to get used to this whole thing…  We have one more lesson before my dressage test and I want to be ready to take advantage of the free XC schooling afterwards!