Relearning how to let go

Over the last couple of months of lessons, we have been working on getting AJ to go more consistently from back to front. I think it's safe to say that this is a pretty basic thing once you get to a certain level of riding. But he fights it pretty much every step of the way (typical lesson horse: don't make me actually use my body!). 

Obviously when he starts to come together and travel more from behind, it is a much better ride in a lot of ways, the distances to the fences are easier, etc. The last couple of weeks, he's been great when we start the lesson, which we normally do on a sort of loopy rein, and then we slowly collect him and ask for more. But when we start jumping, he is really getting himself all wound up. 

Last week, after a rather long distance to a small vertical, he got pretty pissed, and tried to put his head between his knees and buck. It was the first time he's tried to do that to me, but not the first time he's ever done it in a lesson. I pulled him back up, and growled at him to quit it. Then I struggled with letting go of that defensiveness and trusting that he wasn't going to do it again while we tried to end on a good (or at least better than that!) note.

It's hard to trust a horse once they shift into the "dirty" frame of mind! A dirty stop, yanking their head between their knees, etc. Hard to let that go! But, we took a couple more fences, and we did end on a good note.

This week, we'd done 2 small courses when he started to really hang on me, and tried to grab the bit and take me. I pulled him up and asked him to soften as he came back to the walk, instead of charging into it, and then loosened the reins.

C thought maybe we were pushing too much for the back to front connection, and had the idea of switching it up, and trying to get him to relax. So instead of insisting he go around in this collected, bottled up way, let's let him go around like a hunter, and see if he'll relax. So, I trotted around on a loopy rein, trying to only touch his mouth when he started to trot faster than I wanted him to, and he ignored my seat. Once he settled into a long and low head set and his ears were forward, I started to randomly choose fences, one at a time, and trot to them, hop over, let him canter 2-3 strides, and then bring him back to the trot.

Then I asked for a canter, and doing my best to leave him alone, and keep my reins loopy, we started a new course. C wanted me to canter it unless he started to get strong, and then she wanted me to bring him back to a trot. We ended up trotting half the course of 6 fences (once of them we trotted because I took my leg off, oops!), but he wasn't tossing his head or pinning his ears and grunting at the end of the lesson.

I imagine next week will be more of the same, both of us relearning how to let go of our preconceived notions, so that he can be more relaxed and less compressed from back to front.