XC Schooling with Karley & Mel

Decided it was a good idea to try & consolidate Flynn's new bravery (& mine!!) so joined in with Mel, and had a cross country lesson with Karley Windlebourne.

Flynn decided today was the day to show off his new elevated canter (think knees past his ears) & kept napping towards Cobs by throwing out his shoulder. After a few episodes of us not agreeing on the direction we were taking, I decided that enough was enough & gave him a smack on the shoulder. Well that got an unfavourable reaction from the ginga, so gave him another smack, which got a bigger less favourable reaction. So decided that it was prudent to win this one, so with a slightly smaller smack, we managed to complete the turn with no more acrobatics and carried on for the rest of the lsson with no more napping. I really think that I have been quite blissfully unaware of how his previous small episodes when ignored, can really turn into something a bit bigger now that he's older. Here is him jumping just after the little "battle of minds" as you can see he's still a bit pissy hehehe
So anyway, on with the lesson with the new & improved attitude from my orange sidekick.

Karley had us walking down the ramp into the water & just let him stand there & enjoy it, then we started jumping in & out. He did however have a bit of an oopsy at the start of the water jump practice where he biffed himself in to land on all 4s at the same time, however managed to scrape his leg down the wood of the water jump, which moved the boot up his leg & took off all the hair. He was fine however, so we carried on with the lesson. After a while, Flynn decided he was really happy with the water and ended up jumping in & out from where ever we asked him. We ended up doing a cool little combination with a jump 2 strides out from the water, dropping in, then jumping out. You could really tell when he was getting more confident and relaxed as the jumps in & out where getting tidier & tidier.

Jane got some lovely photos of Flynn & Cobs pawing the water, same leg, same expression, its definitely one for the wall!!


It was really interesting in that once Flynn's confidence in the water was 100% sorted, he really became quite the different horse out over the other jumps, he jumped everything I put him out, without hesitation. Karley ended up having us jumping a few open fences as well, which was a bit scarey but completely doable!
Pre Training Corner
Open Corner. Shame the grass is long, this jump is horribly massive!! I had 2 run outs that were rider inspired when I discovered I had left my brave undies at home! But once I changed my line into it, all of a sudden it wasn't a problem & we flew over it! Jumped it a couple more times to prove that it wasn't a fluke haha

Then it was on to another personal dislike of mine, drop fences! Luckily for me, Karley let me do the Pre Training one first, but after that was done, it was straight on to the training version. Geebers, I do not like drops! I managed to talk her out of me doing the open one though, which I was super relieved about!


Unfortunately during the lesson, Flynn managed to lose a shoe, however nobody picked up on it as he never once was ouchy or short. Karley said very nice things about Flynn, she even said he was quite bold, which had me laughing, I had to admit that was the first time anyone had ever called Flynn bold, so I am really starting to feel like I've done him a bit of a disservice with helping him be the whimp he was... I do have to wonder what he'd have been like with a bolder XC rider!

Unfortunately the next day Flynn had a back leg like an elephant, so we had to scratch from the registered Show Hunter out at Pukekohe.