Once again, it's always the rider's fault, not the horse's.

So, I’ve discovered that I’m the cause of the problem with my horses and their jumping. No surprise there, but it makes me sad. I had a lesson with Oliver Saturday, and I wanted to address some of the pulling issues that I’d been having with him during the xc school where he figured out that he had no brakes. The last time Christan rode him over fences was this past summer, and she was having me ride him really forward as he tends to stall out and not use himself. So, I would practically loop the reins and push him at a good clip towards the jump. Then, we started work on balancing him before the jump, so what do I do? Start to pull. I’ve tried really hard to not hang onto him three strides out, but I guess I do it without realizing it. C thinks the trouble began with Sam – in an effort to balance him before the jump, I’ve sort of held on to him at the last stride and then released, which causes him to jump over his forehand. When I balance and then let go the last few strides, Sam jumps well. The same thing is happening with Oliver. In an effort to get him to reach for the bit and put some weight in my hands, more like Sam does, I’ve been allowing him to hang, because I’ve confused pounds of pressure with hanging (with Oliver – with Sam, I seem to know what I’m doing). So, I’ve let Oliver hang on me, which causes him to not carry himself to the jump, so he grabs the bit and runs at it. After a few aborted attempts where Oliver blew me off and ran past his distance, C got on. She fought with him a few times, and then proceeded to show me how she could canter him to the fence with almost NO contact at all, and he just cantered on softly, jumped the jump, and landed softly without any pulling or change of pace – like a hunter. She put me back on, and I realized that I’ve been carrying him, especially in the canter. What I think of as too light is actually correct on Oliver, as he’s a naturally very light horse. Once I realized that, I was able to lope him to the fence as well, without interfering, and we were able to find out spots.

I think that this started the xc at Denny’s, because I seem to remember hitting every single spot dead on until he realized I had no brakes (I think it’s about when we were cantering down a hill), and then he started to pull on me. So, hopefully this isn’t a long-lived problem and we can fix it fairly quickly. I was disheartened by it, thinking that I’m going to ruin Oliver, but Christan assured me that she would help and that it wasn’t a big deal.