Rewarding Bad Behavior

When I say rewarding bad behavior, I mean my horses are rewarding me for my bad behavior, which is the fact that I didn't ride for an entire 6 days last week because Hubs was traveling for work.

I scurried out to the barn on Saturday afternoon for a ride, after spending a morning breaking sewing needles and trying to finish my stupid project of re-binding the tattered Back on Track pad I got in the mail last week. The dog was annoying, the project was annoying and I am sure I didn't deserve two happy-ish, willing horses. But I got that.

Bailey went first, and since it was "warm" - aka above 10 degrees - we trooped up to the larger indoor in jump tack (and the BOT pad) to see if I could get a break and get the arena to myself. While I didn't get my wish, I was still able to get some good work done. Bailey was definitely fired up, but not nearly as bad as I was expecting (I even lunged her, but besides being a pogo stick, she wasn't bucking or bolting or totally insane). She was definitely happy to be moving, but was pretty obedient and worked through some minor spooks like a relatively sane horse. Someone had left a ground pole, some cones and a small cavaletti up in the arena; we ignored the cones, and while B was able to quietly trot over the pole and cav, the canter brought some really delightfully funny sitting and jumping over nothing.

Because I am  the queen of good judgement, I immediately dragged another pole out to the center to see if she would jump it... and if she would jump it, maybe she could do flying changes in the process. For those of you who are new, Bailey can't do a flying change. She can do them naturally, as you can see from her sale video:

But under saddle? No go. She's done one, magical, perfect, quiet change over a year ago, but I have never been able to replicate it. She will get distracted at home, or especially when at shows and cross canter. She often does this half way through a line or somewhere else that is really uncomfortable and potentially bad in the possible crashing department. We've worked on it off and on over the last few years trying to figure it out, but the most we've gotten is a semi-consistent change in the front.

Saturday, however, yielded some fruit. We got a handful of... jumping flying changes? I had to remember to sit back, make my leg cues super obvious and also did some overly obvious bend changing, but changes happened! Bailey answered the question a little differently every time, including leaping straight up into the air over the pole and miraculously landing on the new lead, but SHE DID IT GUYS.

Clearly she just needed the new TSF girth for her jump saddle and a BOT pad to do it ;)

We will see tonight if I can get some media of our second attempt, too.