Grid Work

On Thursday we had our jumping day of the week. I decided to set up a grid to do a gymnastic exercise so we could begin the "real work" instead of just popping over a single low cross rail. I set up three jumps so that I could ride them as a one stride.

Jetta was kind of a brat going through the first few times, sometimes there are negative aspects of having such as bendy, flexible horse. She doesn't respect my leg enough so she popped her shoulder out and ran out on the jumps so I would take her back and make her go over it, even if it was just at the walk. Eventually I got her to trot in and canter in a relatively straight line over the jumps.

Then I had ML get on and ride her through it a few times. She did so good! I think she ran out with her twice and ML backed her up and made her do it again until she got it. The last two times I set the last jump up (which had previously just been a pole on the ground) and made it into a vertical and she did very well.

I did take some pictures, but they didn't turn out very well at all, so I'm not going to post them because Jetta looks just like a dark, blurry blob. I did take some pics so that you can see her pretty canter! And her nice trot :)

Love the lighting in this pic

Pretty silhouette, see how nicely she's tracking up!

Jetta's looking like a grump and it's blurry, but you can
at least see how well she's learning to carry herself!

Pretty background and a nice balanced canter

I really need to get some more poles so I can make more jumps. I really would like to make a five jump bounce so that she really gets to just go through the jumps and gets the striding right.

I think that our next ride is just going to be trot poles, but we'll break out more jumps later in the week. I would really like to teach her to get her striding and to not get so heavy and fast on her forehand, so I think that gymnastic exercises are the key. Here's a few things that I found on-line that I'm planning on doing :)

These are some great looking exercises to do with trot poles

I would like to try some oxers eventually,
 like in this exercise. I hope we have enough poles for it...

I think that this looks like a fun exercise to ride. It definitely
won't be that high, probably a maximum of 2'3"

I thought this PDF for 4-H had some good exercises under "suppling exercises" that I would like to do, stuff on a circle and bending lines.
Also, Lorien stables had some good exercises, especially since Jetta sometimes gets rushy.

Here's some other great sources:
Video: Great Grids from Horsechannel.com
Gymnastic Exercises