Getting off track...Getting back on track...

Fence 2 at Seneca

I'm pretty sure I'm on Plan F right now. I thought getting back on track and moving up to Prelim would be pretty straight forward, but it wasn't. Sally always told me Leo was a horse that needed to be competing every 2 weeks and in a steady program. I totally under estimated how a 2-month break from competitions this summer would impact our relationship.

Leo only had 2 weeks off for his bone bruise, but my travel schedule for work meant I missed out on the competitions Becca was heading to in July. Leo came back into jumping form really quickly and I didn't think there were any major pieces missing. He was spookier than normal and more unsettled when jumping, but I didn't think anything of it initially. Becca also made an off-handed comment in one lesson that I had to be extra careful with the corkscrew. It appeared to her that he was overreacting to my aides.

In August, we did an unrecognized P/T Horse Trials at Bucks County. Leo warmed up great but then stopped at fence 1 and 4 on the stadium course. The distances weren't perfect but they weren't bad. He was really sucking back at the fences and behind my leg. He was not himself. He was fine xc and then I came back and jumped around the training course but he still wasn't great. I was traveling again the following week and Becca had major issues with him in a jump school - more stops but this time at the same fence.

Leo has been known to throw in a stop from time to time - mostly at the start of a jump school when I don't quite have his attention yet. The only other time we had serious jumping problems was last summer when the elevator bit starting backing Leo off. He started getting behind my leg and eventually started stopping at the water jump. Why the water? Who knows, but that's what happened. We softened the bit to the corkscrew, got his confidence back up and got our jumping back on track.

When thinking about Leo's new stopping problem, Becca's comment about the corkscrew popped into my head. I changed Leo's bit to a slow twist snaffle and went to Sally's for a lesson. He stopped 3 times. One was because I chased him past his distance to a large corner and he couldn't make the jump. It was a legit stop and he came around it jumped it fine the second time. The other 2 were simply because the distance wasn't perfect. Sally said he wasn't giving me any margin of error - which I need from my horse - and she wasn't ready to give me the ok to move up to Prelim. I asked her how to handle the stops and she said just to hit him once and move on. She was concerned about frazzling him too much. She also said I needed two solid jump schools at prelim height without any funny business before she would agree to a move up.

I went home and in my next jump school more stops ensued. I made the decision to move down to Training at Loudoun but still took Leo back for a second jump lesson with Sally before the event. This time Leo started off really strong. I got some off distances and he still jumped the fence. Then half way through the lesson I approached a fence and asked Leo to jump from a long spot. He slammed on the brakes. Sally didn't think much of it until I re-approached, got a perfect distance and he slammed on the brakes again. This time, Sally screamed at me to lay into him and to keep hitting him until she told me to stop. Leo was shocked, thoroughly upset and completely confused, but he didn't lose his mind or anything. Sally told me to re-approach and I got my worst distance yet, but Leo jumped the fence. As Sally said, I finally had his attention.

Sally said she is always lenient with the first refusal but after that he was just being a jerk, and the fact that he could figure out how to get over the fence from a crappy spot showed he could have jumped the fence the other 2 times. She now said, at the first refusal, I should deliver swift punishment. She made a point of telling me that if she needs to use the crop, she will deliver 3 good hits, with the intent of leaving a welt (this made me recall Jane's direction to "hit through the horse" when using the crop), then she will calmly continue with the exercise. She said to remain unemotional but be decisive and clear. I later talked to my friend Erin, who is a vet. I was re-telling her the story - Sally is so rarely mad, when she gets mad it makes for a good story! Erin had an interesting perspective: she said swift punishment is how animals in nature respond and interact with each other. Someone is out of line, someone makes a seemingly aggressive correction and then everything goes back to normal. It's a language everyone seems to understand. Animals in nature don't try to rationalize with each other or try to be empathic to the reasons why there is a disturbance. It was a very interesting insight I hadn't considered before.

Ever since that moment, I haven't had another stop on Leo. I've been getting all sorts of horrible distances and he is back to helping me out of them. We also put him on Perfect Prep Training Day feed-thru supplement and that has helped tremendously with the spookiness. He feels like his old self again!

We went to Loudoun at the end of August and had one rail in stadium but a double clear xc round. This past weekend, we went to Seneca and ran Training again. Cross country ran right by stadium and Leo started getting unsettled in warm-up. I've learned to keep him trotting rather than risk an implosion. We had a couple of sticky fences in stadium at the start (the first fence looked out across the xc field and the fourth fence I wasn't riding forward), but he went clear. Then he hopped around the xc course like it was nothing. We nailed all the combinations (and there were 6 of them!) and it felt so damn easy for him. At both events, we were last after dressage in big divisions and moved more than half way up the field with our jump rounds.

So his confidence is back. My trust in him is back. And Sally says he is jumping the best she's ever seen him. Now we're finally entered in the Prelim division at Flora Lea in 2 weeks. The goal is to get around and start getting experience. Ashley told me not to worry about it being pretty or perfect. If I have every rail in stadium down because I can't see my distance, I shouldn't care. I will have plenty of time to get better and pull the stadium piece together. I'm going to get keep that in mind when I'm at Flora Lea.

Plan F also includes running Prelim at Loch Moy and Virginia and then I will call it a season and see if I can save up enough money to head to Aiken again. I can't believe we're already talking about Aiken...

Leo with his eye on a table