Jump Start HT: Takeaways

 First, the good kind of takeaways:

Bucket, ribbon medal, drink cooler, pad, and full set of 4 Equi Flexsleeves.  Jump Start is a great place to win stuff, if you're into that!

Now for the riding takeaways:

1. Lower leg needs work, both over fences and galloping.  This is a subject for another post entirely.

Good...

...wtf.

2. He may always be this kind of XC ride.  I've since talked to a woman who runs her Sec D Welsh Cob prelim, and she said he's always jumped up instead of across, and to this day he's still pretty sticky to the first three fences before he settles in.  She called it a "Cob thing".  It doesn't bother me, but it will be something that causes me to move him up the levels slowly unless we can truly figure it out.

Prelim Cob and his owner going XC schooling a couple of years ago.  Now that is a lower leg!

3.  I need a watch.  Fox River Valley, we were just trying to survive our first BN event with a number not a letter.  But this one, I had something to ride for, and I would have rode it entirely differently if I had a watch.  We were so far under time, but I was still riding aggressively (between the fences, not at the fences) to the very end:

But there's a 3b here: That aggressive (read: fast) ride made him jump better.  Loads of forward plus me knowing to get his hind end engaged before the fence by sitting up in the upper body and half halts (rather than sitting down on him like I used to) really made him jump across in places.

The Prelim Cob owner confirmed the same thing: the bigger the fences and the faster the XC, the less sticky her Cob is.

4. Following that...we CAN make time without issue.  I just need to ask him for it.  For most of my life I have been afraid of going fast, and my fear of the height of the fences at FRV, plus his "You really want me to jump this, eh?" at the base of the fences at FRV, probably made me ride with a more controlled canter there.

I may call him my dachshund, but he's got a cardiovascular system to make up for his short legs.  One of the things I've always liked about him conformationally is his massive nostrils:

I've seen many warmbloods with smaller nostrils than that.  Air intake, no problemo.  If I hadn't done Jump Start, I would have spent the whole winter after FRV thinking he had a time problem.  So glad we decided to do this.

5. The height is really, really no problem for me anymore, even on XC.  I respect it, I set him up well for it, and then I know he's going to carry me safely over it.  No need to be afraid - and just a few years ago I thought I'd never jump anything ever again.  Cool feeling.

6. I am more in love with this horse than I ever have been.  He's really getting fun to ride in all three phases, and more and more it feels like we're connected at the brain.  That's fun!

All in all, it was a great season.  I think the only things we'll do from now until April are jumper schooling shows and maybe some indoor Dressage shows.  As I told L Williams last week, "This pony needs to do jumper rounds until he's so bored his brains melt out of his ears." (Which has been CJF's advice to me with him at every step of the way so far)

Because bored horses don't jump fences like this:

"Waaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"