Cob Jockey

On Sunday, we held our first "Amateur Hour" in quite a while, where a few of us get together on a Sunday afternoon for a jump "lesson" with Mary and socializing afterward. This time, we had some new additions to the cast of characters.

Barbara, Mary, Leah and Tricia

We have a new haul-in, Barbara, who keeps her horses at home 15 minutes from the barn, close to the state park with all the riding trails. We met through Facebook Marketplace of all places, and she's quickly becoming a treasured part of the group. She's an endurance rider, which is a sport I've always wanted to try, and we're already making plans for her to shepherd Connor and I through my first Intro or LD next summer.

Also new to the group, but not to me and Mary, is Mary and I's college friend Tricia who recently moved back to Indiana and specifically told her husband she wanted to live within commuting distance of my barn. Her horse is still across the country at her previous residence for the foreseeable future, but should be coming to board with us sometime next year.

Tricia on Connor

Me watching Mary perfectly and painstakingly walk out a related distance

Connor being his usual perfect self even though neither one of them had jumped since last summer, and neither one of them had jumped together before

Last weekend we had another "Amateur Hour" at the barn, and this time the BO's daughter got to join in on the fun, the one who designed the barn as her high school senior project(!). She's moved to Florida to be with her water skiing instructor husband (tough job to have in Indiana, you know), but she still deeply loves the barn, and I miss her dearly, she's just an all around awesome person.

She came out and was like "I'm just here to watch, I couldn't even fit half chaps in my carry on!" and I was like "Oh no you're not, you're getting a jump lesson on Connor!". Her background is almost entirely Western Pleasure, except after my trainer's program moved in she fell in love with Dressage, and she's been taking weekly lessons on a 28 year old 4th level schoolmaster in Florida for a couple years now. She's a "game for anything" kind of person so I knew she'd take me up on it.

"Oh my gosh, he's wearing three different colors of sparkles," she said. I was like, "You came from Western Pleasure world, AND?"  😂

I warmed her up on the flat, telling her not to be shy about taking up contact and asking for stuff. I find it increasingly easy to instruct people on how to ride him after his full training adventure, and I'm tickled when my advice actually makes him go well for people who have never ridden him before.

I wasn't THAT mean about her not having half chaps - I gave her my MDC irons that keep the stirrup leather off your leg, which worked out surprisingly well. She was sore, but not bruised!

Connor was in a polite but low-energy mood for most of this ride, which I didn't object to since a stranger fairly new to jumping would be popping him over stuff. No need to light a fire under his butt for that.

Once they were warmed up, Mary took over teaching the lesson, first starting with a discussion of the physics of the two point while standing, then starting her over poles at the trot, then the canter, then finally she put the first element up to an X. And he was THE BEST LESSON PONY. Mary turned around to me after this GIF ends and was like "JEN! He is totally taking care of her! Who is this pony, cantering politely out of the line like this?! He's being like a foot perfect lesson pony for her!"

Mary: "He is being on his best behavior for you, normally he wouldn't canter out of a line like this."

By the end, they rocked a tiny vertical, Connor still just being perfect for her (and a little more forward and awake!)

The BO's daughter, for her part, absolutely fell in love with him. She kept saying things like "He's so handy! He makes the Warmblood I ride feel slow and heavy," and "I feel like I could do anything on him." She's being pushed by her trainer to start horse shopping, and she was seriously asking me questions by the end of the ride about buying a Cob. We have another convert, my life's mission! #yougetaCob #andyougetaCob

Another barnmate joined in the lesson again, and her horse was being a bit of a butthead about stopping in a straight line after fences, so Mary got on and put the fear of Jesus into him. "She can really ride," the BO's daughter said almost reverently. I was like "I know, everything she sits on improves."

First attempt - he was SO convinced he knew better than she did about going around the corner after the line.

Last attempt - "Yes ma'am"

After that we hung out for wine, cheese, fresh bread, and watching Mary's husband and Annie ride Zippy together. Love these warm spring days!

Last weekend, Mary and I finally pulled together an "Amateur Hour" on Saturday, in which we did a group jump lesson taught by Mary (free and with no remunerations exchanged of course) and then we all hung out for wine, fresh bread and a charcuterie board from the local butcher shop.

Hangin'  in the the barn's office

Mary took her job very seriously, and she's a darn good eq teacher. She started us off with a really cool unmounted exercise, in which she had us stand on a rocking chair to get a feel for why the motion of the horse leads weenie ammies like us to do many of the common jumping position faults. She said a lot of problems occur because horse and rider are moving in a static pace together on the approach, but then the horse has to accelerate over the fence (not in terms of speeding up to the jump, but the takeoff power required to get over the fence), which the weenie ammie's position is not ready to absorb.

First she had us stand on the rocking chair in a good jump position, and feel how the motion of the chair rocking underneath us mimicked the horse's head, neck and shoulders launching forward into the jump from the takeoff position. It really did! For the rest of this, imagine the horse's head, neck and shoulders is the chair's back, and the tail is toward the mounting block.

My barnmate A here has never really jumped before, for the record.

Next she had us do it "wrong". First up, jumping ahead. She had us straighten our legs and put our hands forward as we rocked the chair back and forth a bit. As an expert jumping ahead'er, I was kind of shocked by just how much this position felt like what it really feels like in the saddle. My weight immediately went onto my toes, and my center of gravity got pitched forward over the " horse's neck".

Jumping ahead

Next, getting left behind and catching the horse in the mouth. For this one she had us straighten our legs and put our hips forward until we felt our center of gravity move. Your hands couldn't not move backwards in this position when the horse's neck went up. It was pretty eye opening how interconnected all of these faults are.

Getting left behind and catching your horse in the mouth

Finally, she talked about how the movement of your hips closing to absorb the motion properly over the fence feels like a backward jump squat on the ground: solid position, lots of energy propelling the hips backward, but with enough control to land in a good solid energy-absorbing position on the other side. So we jumped off of the rocking chair backwards, and then immediately upon hitting the ground did a second backwards jump squat.

After that, she built up an exercise that eventually at the end became placing pole, crossrail, one stride, crossrail, one stride, vertical, placing pole. She jacked up my stirrups to hole 12 (I do Dressage at 3, jumping flatwork at 5, and the highest I had ever gone before was 11 on XC back in the day) and had me do a bunch of times through the exercise going into it in my jumping position with my hands "touching Connor's ears" to encourage my hips to go back. 

Started out a little rough, but look at my hips going back! If you want to know what my normal jumping position is like, it's that picture of me on Flounder I posted a week or so ago. Standing up in the stirrups and neutralizing all my shock absorbers for no reason.

This is the first time anyone has REALLY worked with me on eq. I've gotten a lot of functional position lessons in the past, but nothing that has gone into the physics of jumping like this. And part of it is that Connor is finally normal enough over fences to be a good platform for learning how to jump on.

Look at this progress!

At the end, she put the last one up to a "probably 2'3" vertical. And as I was trotting into this line, staring down the biggest fence we had jumped in quite honestly probably 5 years, I was struck by how not worried I was about it. It looked huge, but I trusted my horse, and that was a super cool feeling.

My position wasn't quite as good over these, but getting over the vertical at the end was a huge mental accomplishment.

Finally, at the end, we convinced my barnmate who has never really jumped before (and sat out the lesson doing her own thing while we jumped) to get on Connor and go through the line with poles on the ground. Connor is starting to earn a status as everyone's lesson pony at my barn after he taught a barnmate about connection two weeks ago and then this barnmate about jumping last weekend. Makes my heart happy <3

Lesson pony extraordinaire, taking care of everyone