Rose jumps her first vertical!

Through the course of the week Rose overcame her fears of scary arena corners and judges booths, and we ended up doing some good work on our last couple rides. So I decided Friday we would mix things up and have jump day, which would be her third time jumping. The weather was less than ideal, so we had to work in the indoor arena.

Warm Up
Rose contemplated having issues with the scarey corner again, but I applied leg and asked for contact and she nicely marched forward. "Phew, no fights today" I thought to myself. She warmed up nicely and then I took her over one set of three trotting poles and one set of three canter poles, each set up on the quarter line at B & E. Rose, ever so clever, remembers jumping now, and decided it would be far easier to jump all of the trotting poles than to trot through them. This meant that from the trot she more or less jumped a 9' ditch. My current view is I don't care how she does it so long as she goes forward and over. So I went with her, and believe it or not it turned out to be a nice jump! The next time around however, she decided it was best to trot through the trotting poles. Our canter poles are another deal entirely. Rose apparently would rather jump a double bounce than just canter over the poles. So again, I just go with her and let her do what she'd like, so long as it is forward and over. If she wants to jump them, fine. Plus it is kinda fun.

Jumps
I left the canter poles as they were, and set the trot poles up to a little ex. She jumped it like a pro, at both the trot and canter. Coming in she was nice and responsive to leg and seat, balanced, accepting contact, and nicely picking up her feet, and going over the jump. After the jump I asked her to continue on with the canter, collect, change lead through simple change if needed (half the time she landed with the correct lead), and continue on to our canter poles. She was doing so well, I decided to see what would happen over a vertical. I set the little cavalleti block to the 1-3" setting and made a vertical.  Again, we started jumping it at the trot, then canter, and in both directions. She was perfect. "Well" I thought to myself "I think I aught to put it up and see what she does".

Rose's first 2' Vertical

I hopped off and set up a 2' vertical. I took a deep breath and brought her around at the trot. PERFECT JUMP! "Hot damn" I thought, "lets try it at the canter". Around the arena we went, continuing on with the canter, going through the canter poles and then around to our little jump. She found her distance, got her lead, and got a TON of praise. I repeated it in the other direction, got a repeat performance, and then decided to end on that very good note. What a thrilling ride!

After our ride, one of my fellow borders commented to me about what a nice jumper she is, and was shocked to hear that that was her third time jumping and her first vertical. Gotta say, that totally gave me the warm fuzzies. Such a nice compliment. 

Happy trails and swooshing tails!