Jump ALL THE HORSES

I have a horse named Indiana in training currently.

He's 10, looks like a Tennessee Walking horse, and has a difficult time maintaining the right lead. But on Monday when I was jumping my other animals, I figured let's just see what happens.

He's surprisingly good over fences! He needs a LOT of support to the fence, and riding him actually feels like you're sliding over the jumps, but the photos turned out really well so he must not be all that bad.

I borrowed Carly's exercise from the other day: a bounce, two strides to an oxer. I put Kat, Tango, and Indiana through it.

Kat was predictably amazing.

Having the photos to look at in between going through the line gave me a lot to think about. I have a serious release issue with Kat, mostly because when we hit the ground we often are going at lightspeed and I think I'm trying to slow her down midair, but... that doesn't work super great.

SHE IS THE CUTEST THING EVER

After looking at this one I got a little better at just trusting her

Just look at her!

This was our last jump, I put it down a bit to end on an easier effort. TOO MUCH RELEASE KATE

And then I took Tango through this, though for him I just had a cavaletti, two strides, jump. He kept taking it in three strides.

ohmygod who is this horse and where did he come from

 He had zero stop in him, he would have jumped anything I pointed him at. The problem came after the fences, when he wanted to put his face very close to the ground and thrash his head around.

So we made the jump bigger. Total solution, right?

If I loosened one rein and held the other against him, it seemed like he was less interested in fighting me, but the best result came from just totally letting the reins slip through my fingers after the fence. He's not bucking, he's not crowhopping, and the saddle doesn't seem to hurt him anywhere. His teeth are good. He has some butt muscle soreness but his back seems good. I'm not sure why he does that, but I'm going to see if we just keep working at it and let him find his own balance if that helps.