Over Zealous

Donkey On Duty

I think I made a mistake.

There's a pretty clear trend with my last few lessons on Fuego. We were riding on a high until around the beginning of February, and then his demeanor changed, and then the splint showed up, and then he continued to be a lot more tense than usual. I had initially felt that the splint was the answer to all of our problems, but it definitely was not. My lovely little Dressage horse came back, but jumping seems to still be a point of contention. Trainer T also decided to make a change with his supplements and pulled him off of one of them for a few weeks. The weather is getting warmer, he's still shedding out his "winter" coat, and he's just been feeling a touch sluggish. He seemed like he was just having a little bit of trouble, so she tested things out.

Unfortunately, it did not go well because Fuego is a psycho. I had a semi-private with another adult who rides Destello. It was a quiet Sunday evening, usually the time that I do my own hack. Trainer T was coming back from Global, where she cleaned up with two of the horses she trains. She's become quite hands off in the warm-up and trusts me to put Fuego through his paces. She mostly lets me focus on him, and then gears her input towards me. She had us do some sitting trot and no stirrup work together for the first time while I worked through circles and leg yielding. It was nice to kind of "do whatever I wanted" while still having the added challenge of changing my position. Also, the leg yields are much much better than the first time.

I gave him a carrot once, and now he's in love with me

Now, here's where I think I made a mistake.

I think I became over zealous with our jumping. I was so excited to canter a course with him, and it was great! Until we started jumping things that, like, actually have to be jumped. I've mentally been trying to figure out why he went from hitting those milestones to being a nutjob, and I genuinely think it has to do with the fences going up (initially 12" now anywhere from 24"-30"). I need more pace, especially with oxers being added to the equation, but it's a back and forth between asking him to move forward and holding him back. I've scaled back slightly, and we're trotting a lot of fences now.

This ride in particular, he was coming off of one of the lines very strong, and I try not to rip on his face because that tends to not get us anywhere. However, his mentality was just so forward that she rescinded her usual critique and said it might be necessary to give him a hard half halt. I didn't end up doing it, but that just gives you an idea of how fast he was going.

Our last bareback ride was a month ago. Maybe he just needs some r & r?

His biggest issue was the gymnastic. It's shocking how fast the horse can go through that thing. He knocked basically every rail, then took out a stride every single time to the final oxer. He turned a standard two stride into a once, and made it look easy. The horse has a massive shoulder, I'll tell you that.

Everything else was relatively easy. The actual one stride rode very well every time. He was wiggly through the bending line but nothing that couldn't be corrected. We're jumping the wishing well like a dream. The green wall is still eh; sometimes good, sometimes bad, just taking it each day with that one. We did the course several times through, hoping that he would eventually slow down through the gymnastic, but it wasn't happening, so we left it at that. Trainer T raised the fences so Destello could jump through and offered that if I wanted to try out one of our better portions of the course, we were free to do so.

I hemmed. I hawed. I hemmed some more. Hawed some more. Sure, let's do it. I did the first three fences of the course, which was the green wall bending to the one stride, which was a vertical coming in and an oxer going out. It was getting dark, and one of our arena lights is out so the green was a bit hard to see. We trotted in, he knocked it, but cantered out nicely. I got him close to the next vertical, but he saved my butt, opened up that massive shoulder again, and gave plenty of space over the oxer.

So, that's the story of how my crazy horse jumped 2'-9" for the first time. Oi, the adventures with this horse are endless.

Best view <3