laying tracks

An overwhelming proportion of traffic across this modest little blog these days is non-human. Bots, crawlers and scrapers out mining data to power the next generation of LLMs, no doubt. 

It’s always interesting to see which posts and pages are getting swarmed, tho. Not that there’s any rhyme or reason to it — but it’s sorta like a random magic 8 ball surfacing an ever changing array of old thoughts, memories, experiences, etc from the archives. 

haven’t taken many new pics lol so instead enjoy this festive pony sticker that came in a care package from a friend!

I like to click thru and reread old posts anyway, and the sorta ‘random’ nature to the bot traffic often brings up long forgotten stuff. And sometimes there’s inspiration to be found! Like when a lesson recap from almost exactly 6 years ago popped up, describing the “anti-grid grid” we’d practiced in a jumping session!

pic from back in january, pre-storm, last time we jumped a couple little jumps

It immediately struck me as something we could try even within the confines of the narrow but long indoor! Because real talk, guys, I really have not done a ton of ‘proper’ course work with Doozy, and admit to avoiding a lot of related distances of the 4 to 6 stride variety. 

Ymmv, but to me it seems like shorter combos — your typical gymnastics or grids — are more intuitive to the horse, and harder to miss on the striding. Longer lines — think 7-8+ strides — are more forgiving of variations in the horse’s stride length, aka easier to add or leave out a stride. But that middle distance, which is naturally most common in competition, kinda wants more commitment lest you end up on the half stride.

finally set a little mini course this weekend tho. pic not to scale, but was a pleasant little assortment of options!
distances: 21’ for the in-an-out one stride bottom right corner; ~55’(ish, I didn’t exactly measure) to the blue oxer

We really haven’t jumped much at all since our last competition in November, either. There have been a couple lessons — notably the two gymnastics clinics with Sally, and also the Loch Moy lesson with Dan that I didn’t really write about but was fine — but otherwise we’ve mostly just dinked around occasionally with whatever was set up in the indoor. Usually singles, and sometimes some bounces.

simple cross rail (illustrated in pink in the sketch) off one diagonal 

The weather this weekend was gorgeous, tho. And with Doozy being in a notably placid and serene mood (LO-fucking-L), I was determined to actually set stuff up intentionally and ride it. 

Starting with, naturally, the anti-grid grid of a bi-directional 21’ one stride to ~55’ (sliiightly short 4 stride). And a few singles to facilitate cruising flow and easy changes of direction.

bn vertical off the other diagonal (red in the sketch). can also see the bending line to the swedish oxer behind doozy. generous ground lines on both sides since this was our tallest jump.

Nothing crazy, obviously lol. The biggest thing height-wise was a barely-BN vertical with out-to-there ground lines and big bright fluffy flower fill to help give lots of definition to the jump for Doozy. The swedish oxer was maybe a titch larger than you’d expect to see at starter level, esp in base spread, but certainly inviting for BN.

Nbd tho. Indoor course work unsupervised after a relatively quiet season does not have to be balls to the wall, all out, amirite? And also real talk: for the last two competition seasons I’ve kinda gritted my teeth and gotten almost all of our jumping done solo outside of lessons. It was what it was, no regrets or anything, but it’s not reeeally how I’m hoping the year ahead will go for us.

swedish oxers are so versatile and are more inviting to ride off both directions than square oxers. generous ground lines on both sides.

A big priority this coming year will be more jumping lessons, have no fear. But ya know. In the meantime, why not have a little fun, right?? RIGHT lol. 

Doozy just loves to jump. I wasn’t sure if she’d be wild or explosive or make bids for the fences after so much gymnastic work in recent months… But honestly she felt SUPER in her connection. She seems to thrive with a steadily closed leg, hip to heel — think: “hugging” the horse — matched with a firm but not dead-weight rein contact — think: feeling the bit move, vs a dull grip.

She has such a natural desire to push forward that the jumps seemed to come up comfortably if I could maintain my end of the connection.

set of 2’3 verticals for the in-and-out, 21’ distance for a more compressed one stride. flowers centered directly under pole for riding in both directions. no extra ground lines bc i was a little lazy, but it was nice test for us to not always have ‘training wheels’!

We did have one moment of getting inverted — our classic ‘face-full of Dooz ears’ move — traveling across the long bending line from the vertical to the swedish the first time, but honestly it was my fault (obvi), I needed to trust that we could wait for the stride **without** shortening or pulling back. Came back around and trusted it and Doozy kept her shape, good girl. 

And actually the anti-grid grid was so perfect for this. The 4 strides felt blazing fast, dear god, even tho I set it a little short. But it rode great every time — in both directions, oxer to in-and-out or other way around. So it was good for me to remember that feeling too, esp after months of riding in the indoor where it’s easy to get under powered and off the stride. 

the whole line can be ridden both ways, 1 to 4 or 4 to 1; can also catch both ends as bending lines to the earlier diagonal elements: X to in-and-out, or vertical to swedish. i didn’t try to ride the other way — jumping into the line then veering onto a bend — tho you could do that too

All in all a productive session, but also, ya know… Just plain fun LOL. And a good experience of just going out and doing it and not ‘overthinking’ it too much, as Dan would say. 

Tho ya know. Now that things are thawing out and temps are climbing again, obvi we’re already starting to get eager for the next fun adventure opportunity! Hopefully soon to come!