free jumping Charlie

Alternate titles:

Big trees fall hard.

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Maybe we should stick to dressage.

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What we have here is a failure to ambulate.

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When we go high, he goes low.

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At least he's pretty.

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i can live with pretty

Ahhhahaha..... yea. So, lol, Charlie is a quiet horse. He is extremely laid back. It's his defining characteristic, and was ultimately the deciding factor when I found him fresh off the track, unstarted and body + foot sore.

i like riding in pretty places too

So far, it's worked out pretty well for me. I'm having a lot of fun with Charlie and he's perfectly suited  for my "Let's do all the things!" approach to horses.

quiet, thy name is charlie!

There's a downside to his casual, laissez-faire attitude tho. Namely, despite being a decidedly-not-dumb horse, Charlie doesn't think particularly deeply about obstacles that may fall in his path. Nothing really impresses him, and he's not super inclined toward exertion.

This can often create stumbling blocks (lol puns) in the training process.

bella looked great!!!!
spoiler alert: charlie reached neither this height, nor this form haha

Anyway. A couple weeks ago, Britt's post about free jumping her lovely new horse Smitty reminded me of when Brita and I sent Wick down a chute a couple years ago, and the lasting positive impact that had on Wick. That was the turning point in when Wick finally figured out what this whole jumping thing was all about.

he tried, tho. sorta.

Fast forward a couple weeks to when trainer P brought up the subject again in a lesson, suggesting that Charlie could benefit from the exercise. And when we learned that one of our regular ship-in lesson mates wasn't coming this week, we set the date. Charlie would learn to free jump!

ground pole champion!!!

I rode Charlie around the outdoor dressage court briefly to warm him up in all three gaits, then took him into the indoor to help finish setting up. We sent the horses through the chute first with nothing, then with ground poles, then each slowly built up to various configurations of cavaletti - 18' - jump - 18' - jump.

gotta watch out for those cavaletti tho.... they'll getcha every time!

Oh Charlie. He struggled a bit with this exercise. Ground poles were fine, but the big guy basically ate shit over his first cavaletti. He gave them a little more respect after that.... but not much. Once he kinda got the idea over two cavaletti in a row, we gave him a break to think about it while another horse took her turn.

c'mon charlie, this problem is not solved by slowing to a walk over the poles...

Then Charlie went through again and eventually built up to a ground pole - 18' - cavaletti - 18' - 2'6 oxer. And by that time he had basically figured out the drill and cantered right on through the exercise, barely registering the "increased" height (3 whole inches, whoa buddy!) on his last trip.

moving out with a little encouragement

So that was reassuring haha. When he actually pays attention and at least half-way applies himself, the work comes fairly easily to him. His form is good enough for my purposes and his canter appears easy to jump from. He's just... gotta... ya know... JUMP.

there ya go, buddy! there's that exaggerated canter stride we know and love!

In time, Charlie. In time.

and we have lift off!!

And in the meantime, we'll probably revisit this exercise with some regularity as Charlie continues to learn how to sort himself out.

Grid work is a common theme in lessons with trainer P anyway, but letting the horse go without a rider had the advantage of removing his whole "resisting the rider's aids" issue from the equation. Without a rider, Charlie had nothing to fuss or fight against distracting him from the task at hand.

video here, fail-tacular wipe out and all

(i was undecided about including the wipe out in the video bc i'm like 73% positive charlie's former owners subscribed to my youtube channel.... and.... while it wasn't a bad fall, it's also not really the picture i want them to have of their beloved race horse learning to jump. oh well. my adherence to documenting the entire training process won out, and the clip is included. tho i resisted the urge to add in gratuitous slo-mo..... maybe that'll crop up as a gif one of these days!)

The way I see it, everything seems to happen a little slowly in Charlieland - including his let down and transition from race horse to riding horse (we're just now at the 6 month mark since his last race). But I'm hopeful for some breakthrough moments haha. I'm both eagerly awaiting and dreading our first xc jumps. Methinks the solid fences will grab his attention and encourage more respect.... but I also would love to not ride one of those epic stumbles.... We'll see!

Ahh horses. It's always a trade off with something, right? I really love Charlie's quiet and pleasant disposition tho - and the time I spend with him is often the highlight of my day. So that alone is enough to bolster my patience in taking the time he needs to figure out what apparently does not come super naturally to him.

Have you faced similar trade offs with your horse? Has your horse needed extra time for skills development? Or maybe he's like Bella - plenty talented, but sensitive and needing help staying calm?