New Bridle and New Skills

GUYS.  The cute:

Thanks to JenJ alerting me to it, I scored this used Nunn Finer Figure 8 off English Tack Trader.  I always thought he'd look good in a figure 8, but since I had other bridles that worked, I wasn't able to justify buying one unless the price was right.

"Hello, there."

If only he'd had that bridle on here, to complete the faux-jumper look.

He responded to his jumper bridle by being a serious jumping machine in our lesson last night.  We first worked on adjustability in the canter, and then got to jumping, 2'0 verticals and a 2'3 oxer at first, then the oxer was raised to 2'6.

The whole night, he was doing automatic simple changes - and they were GOOD.  It's so amazing to me.  It's the clearest example of the many-years-long green horse training process I've seen so far with him, because so many steps went into that one thing.

Before, just a couple of months ago, he'd land on the wrong lead and I'd have to compose myself, bring him down, control that wild trot and then ask for the canter.  My trainer has been on to me to push him to do a quicker simple for a long time, we always had 4-6 trot strides in between.

After that one lesson with the crazy turns followed by the straightness over fences lessons, he's doing them all by himself, and with just the tiniest moment of trot stride in between.  I don't even think it's a full stride.

Photo by my mom

The process for those automatic simples (that's a thing, right?  That's what I am calling them. I'm in no way initiating that, besides turning him), as I see it:

First, he has to know that we're not done after this fence.  

Next, he has to know that he should still be cantering (vs just breaking to the trot to avoid the awkward wrong-lead canter).

Next, he has to know from previous experience that things will be more comfortable for him if he's on the opposite lead, and he has to want to be on the opposite lead. 

Next, he has to know what to do to fix it, or, as my trainer said, "We've given him the tools and he's using them now."

Finally, he has to coordinate his body enough to fix it.  I know we're not talking about flying changes - although he's done one in each of my last two lessons, and maybe those aren't as far off as I thought they were.  But we're talking about a horse that, two years ago, couldn't get information from my aids, to his brain, to his feet quickly enough to pick up the canter.  Now, he's nailing simple changes with the smallest trot stride possible in between, without me doing a thing (because I'm probably still gathering my reins from the last fence, let's be honest.)

Maybe this all won't be amazing to me 20 years from now when I've been through this process a few times, but for now?  It's freakin amazing.  I can point to this one thing and say, "This horse LEARNED this thing, and here's the two year process it took to teach it to him."

Getting more rideable all the time.

Google keeps Instagramming my pictures.