On day one of the clinic  Izzy did well over a little cross pole exercise, but then we were to do an oxer, with a ladder on one side and a lattice on the other. I may as well have been asking her to jump over our house. Sandra kept taking pieces of the jump down until we ended up with half a cross pole and poles on the ground…and this was Izzy finally clearing it. After this she was ok with it. The next day neither the lattice nor the ladder were an issue.

Izzy and Zander (w/Cadence) attended the Sandra Donnelly clinic this weekend. The first day was a little exciting for both horses: new arena, jumps stored at one end and people and pulled pork at the other end! The flat work was simple the first day, just some work on staying consistent and straight. Jumping started with jumping 3 jumps on a circle at the far end, 3-4 strides apart. Izzy did that well, but then the plan changed to jumping the circle and then going across the diagonal to an oxer. Unfortunately the oxer was brown rails with a white ladder on the approach and a lattice on the offside. Izzy absolutely did not understand that it was jumpable. Sandra took away the lattice and ladder and made it HALF a cross pole and poor Izzy still didn’t want to jump it! When we finally went over it was quite a launch! Unfortunately Rob did not video…

The second day we did more flat work, including some shoulder in at trot, and shifting from full seat, to “light” seat to two point at canter. For jumping we progressed to jumping a line across the diagonal with the jumps set straight. Izzy didn’t care for either end of the arena so the jumps set really close to the ends were a little interesting, but she was overall very brave and willing.

Zander was really good and liked the exciting course today so Sandra let them jump a bit bigger. He is a pretty clever horse!

Some video of Izzy from the Second day