Went over to Dan Jocelyn's yard on Wed afternoon with a friend for a SJ lesson.
Slightly traumatic journey there when lorry in front of us suddenly swerved onto hard shoulder and we were faced with 2 cones in the middle of the inside lane. Thank god they were just cones as despite friend swerving we still hit them with my side of the lorry - slight near death moment!
Anyway, made it there safely. Horses both came off lorry with eyes on stalks as football match the other side of a hedge halfway up the hill and various odd noises coming from that direction but managed to get them focused on jumping and had a really successful lesson. SJ is my least favourite discipline - my old horse was a serial last minute runner-outer culminating in me breaking my wrist at Merrist Wood and getting shipped off to hospital under blue lights - spent 3days in hospital and it just served to convince me that jumping wasn't for me.
I bought Monty as a confidence giver in the SJ but I still always feel this need to panic if I cant see a nice stride and panicing generally involves hanging onto the reins and killing the canter. I dont think anyone ever taught me to jump - I just worked it out myself which means no-one has ever really told me what sort of canter I need and how to ride a SJ course. Have had various lessons over the years but think I learnt more with Dan in an hour than I have in all of those. We spent a while really developing the canter that he needed for jumping which was much bigger than I would normally ride, especially in an arena and working him into the outside rein, not letting him get strung out and rigid. Keep his bum underneath him on the turns, half halt with the outside rein and let the fence come to you. Well, it certainly worked. We finished with jumping a 1m/1.05m course and he was flying! I met one fence wrong all session and that was because I saw a stupidly long one and pushed for it and horse stuck in a short one - if I'd stayed calm and let fence come to me I'd have been ok but I learnt from it! The good thing was with the canter like that I didn't feel the need to panic and hold for any of the fences even though they were definitely outside my comfort zone height wise. Definitely recommend Dan - I will be going back for sure!
Final course one way:
Final course the other way:
And just the related distance, followed by turn to upright:
Warming up to jumping a course vids:
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