Starting Jumping Coursework

This morning Son of a Lynx and I started some jumping coursework.  He's been jumping crossrails individually both in the ring and out in the fields, though due to some technical difficulty I haven't managed to get it on video because of issues with my GoPro.  I think I've got it sorted out now, so fingers crossed we'll have some gopro footage this week!

Lynx is very smart, and with a horse this intelligent it can be a challenge to give him enough interesting work that he doesn't get bored, but without overwhelming him with information and frustrating him.  My goal is to always to make him feel like he's brilliant and doing things right, so I ignore mistakes and praise him when he gets the right answers.  This creates a really confident horse who trusts himself and his judgement over fences.  

In the long run this gives him the ability to see distances, to increase or decrease speed and stride length, and to make up for rider mistakes.  If his new humans want to do jumping with him but need a little help, I want Lynx to be able to take care of his rider, whether that's in an arena jumping over poles or outside galloping on a cross country course.  I start creating this in the beginning, by riding him on a loose rein over these small jumps.  I'm steering mostly with my seat and legs, so he can figure out how best to use his body over the jumps.  He needs his neck for that, hence the loose reins. 

I call this exercise the blender, because it's so many things all at once in a circle.  It's trotting through turns, balancing with a rider through transitions, jumping the crossrails, organizing a lot of hooves!  Lynx thought it was great fun, something new to think about and technical enough that it was interesting.  I kept it a short training session so that he wouldn't get frustrated or feel overfaced, but he doesn't need many repetitions before he's got it. I've no doubt he'll think about it overnight and probably have it down tomorrow morning.  Once the footing is a little better we'll start slowly raising the size of the jumps too, to increase the difficulty and build his confidence.

https://youtu.be/pYgZcVCBeNo?is=lKF3b0y-eE7Tfwn6