Kieran might make a jumper yet!

Tonight, we warmed up with serpentines (walking and trotting). And then Christina had me either walk or trot Kieran until we got to A or C, then turn on the centerline, and when he was straight, do a canter transition, then canter down centerline.

Well, that was the idea, anyway. You could tell Kieran was like, "wtf? But there's no WALL!" Still, we got a couple strides of canter out of him, both ways (up and down), and I bet next week when I ask him, he'll pick it up more quickly. Basically, just trying to lesson any dependence on the wall (and hey, it makes it so he's "working" in the middle of the ring too and not just out on the rail).

After that, Christina set up a jump at X, starting out with another low crossrail and a ground pole leading in to it. Basically, we just trotted over it with me having to go into two point when he did. Then she would play with the configuration. Ground poles on both sides or a low vertical. Or low crossrail followed by a ground pole a stride away, followed by the cavaletti. Just doing different things to get him to raise his feet, basically.

At the end, it was just between a foot and 18 inches high and we got him to "jump" over it from each direction instead of trotting over it.

I told Christina that if we'd tried to do this six months ago, he'd have kept knocking poles down, but tonight he was doing really well at not just bulling through it and trying to get over it. Yay!

Oh yeah, she also pointed out it looked like he was listening better tonight when I was pushing his butt over while we were on the wall (see my complaints in the previous lesson post about him drifting in and cutting corners). And she said it looked like I was doing better too myself with keeping my leg still and going into two-point without having to think as hard about doing it.