We moved on to work on the pole exercise with 2 poles and varying the strides between it. Started with 5 then moved on to 4 which was the only one we struggled with which showed up my weakness of seeing a stride at a faster pace (something to work on!) We got it up to 8 strides without trouble and I think he could easily have done 9 or even 10. Had to work on keeping the connection and not letting him stick his head up in the air and run which is what happened when I aimed for less strides. (More homework)
We then moved on to our favourite x pole to oxer exercise. Ended up with a decent sized oxer which he was pinging no probs.
We then moved on to jump a course. He was super keen and we got all the stridings fine, just fluffed up the turn to the big purple oxer as was over-thinking the tight left turn afterwards and didn't keep the power up through the turn. Even managed to mostly land on the correct leads and the one time we didn't we got a change sorted fairly quickly. Chris said it was super and we were the only ones not to have to repeat any of the course :) Love him when he's really taking me forwards and just makes it all feel so easy!
Chris is off back to Australia now until the New Year but he said next year we will try and work on keeping him that little bit more connected so he's not running around with his head stuck up in the air quite so much. I think I'll need to watch how he manages that one with Monts as at 16 he is rather stuck in his ways. His canter and general softness has improved heaps though so will certainly give it a go as will allow me to adjust him round a course a bit more rather than him just running on his forehand more and more. He said it would also help us XC. Tentatively planning entering a Newcomers off the back of this lesson - just have to hope we don't go clear in the first phase and need to do the jump off!
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