This week I revisited Ella and her cracking jumping pony Red.
Now when I say Red is rather keen, I mean he is a very fast jumping machine sort of pony, and loves his job. When I first met Red and Ella some months ago when they were a very new partnership. Ella wanted a more gentle and educational bit for schooling, rather than a ‘brakes’ bit that she needs for jumping. We bitted him with a softer schooling bit and they have been working on building their relationship and training Red to be more settled and relaxed in schooling sessions. He now schools beautifully with suppleness and rhythm.
Now they have both become more confident with each other, we needed to make a change to his jumping bit. Red is extremely athletic when jumping and can sometimes take over which leaves Ella with little chance to check him when coming into a fence. We didn’t want to over-bit Red so he backed off fences, just enough so Ella had some say in the striding. As you can see in the video he is an amazing jumper and loves his job, but he now allows Ella have some say in how they do it. Watching them jump that high made my knees wobble!
