The Grey Jumper

I recognize that when I posted the photo yesterday of Griffin jumping I gave zero details.

Well, as a reward for your patience here they are: he was jumping a 3'3" vertical in the photo.

3' here

3'3"

3'3" - I love his expression. Such focus.

I wanted to work the little man a bit yesterday before working miss Q - fresh out of her vacation.

I worked on the lunge line awhile in both directions playing around with a new device to get him to give to pressure from the bit without it being because his hock action forced it [Fauxssoa] (this will be another post in itself if I can get the homemade device to my specifications).

After 10 minutes or so of this, I took the surcingle off and just lunged him around the barnyard.

I had him do the bounce set with slants, then set those up to 1'3", and also had him jumping a 1'9" jump that had a wide ground pole set so he really had to work on jumping longer and not just up.

From there, I set a 3' vertical and lunged him over it a time or two.

You can see above how much he was concerned with this.

And so I popped the jump up to 3'3" for a finale to end on.

And he excelled.

Its worth noting that I've never ridden this horse over a jump. This is not likely to happen for another year - maybe more.

I've also never put any "gadget" on him to somehow modify his body position when he's jumping.

This is Griffin. All Griffin. His natural form.

Yeah. Right?

I'm excited.

I've got a feeling I'll have to get over my fear of the show ring with this horse. He's just got so much potential. I'm so excited for his future.