Twister On His Game: Jump School

Jump school with Twister day. There has been a few days this week where I wanted to jump school and one or the other of us were not in the right mindset. Today the sun was out and I had a good day at work and I figured I'd give it a go.

We warmed up on a long rein and I made sure he was moving off my leg and was responsive. Twister isn't a horse you can be on auto pilot with. Especially once you start jumping. If you point him at a jump, he'll jump it. But you can't expect him to get his corners or come at it at the correct angle. You can't expect him to land and go where you want him to. Sometime he lands a jump and tries to do a rollback for no freaking reason. Good to know he can do that. But at a beginner starter CT, I won't need any rollbacking.

crappy stills. Still need to put my stirrups up one more hole

I have 4 jumps to work on and did a lot of cantering to them. After a few times over each of them I let Twister catch his breath and then I asked him to do it all over again. He actually didn't get as sloppy as he normally does. We were mostly getting our distances and he got a little heavy but a kick or smack woke him up and got him moving up again.

Mostly, I focused on my legs. A couple strides out I just pointed him and leg leg leg and made sure I was keeping my leg on over the jump so that it wouldn't swing all over. When we landed I wasn't falling all over him. Leg leg leg.

thank you, shadows, for hiding my leg :P

I was really happy with our jumping today. Very happy. 10 days out from our CT. I'll have one day where I lunge him and do some join up. I need to practice my dressage test. So I need to have a few dressage days, done in my jumping saddle so that I can pop over a few at the end of every day. And one more day to do another full jump school. He'll get next Saturday off so I can have a fresh horse at the show. This might also be my first all alone show experience!

what the kids do while i ride