Jumping

Dylan was really rocking his jumping this week, I was a very happy bunny! Lovely and smooth, confident, and extended. I don’t think his take off points are right so we do have to do more work on that.

Only one minor issue when he nearly backflipped over a jump, and I have genuinely no idea how he managed it. I can only assume (?) that he either tried to throw in an extra stride and then severely misjudged it, or tried to avoid me and propped with his front legs and lost it with his rear. We both recovered and carried on and no harm done, he bounced back quickly enough. I actually think the main thing was because of his aversion to knocking poles, he’d rather jump six foot too high to recover than knock the pole and land safely.

Fab weave entries, absolutely no popping regardless of whatever I was doing. Lovely! We’ve also done plenty of work on seesaw confidence, which seems to be paying off now. I keep trying to mix up doing early releases, quick releases and holding his contacts, which seems to be working. I really do love how happy Dyl is with his contact position, he really smiles at me when he’s stood waiting for his release … at which point I usually have to wait until he’s looking for the next obstacle, which is what he should be doing, but he does make me smile as well!

I’m feeling much more confident about sending Dylan and letting him roll. That’s definitely a result of the training day we were on a couple of weeks ago, it really showed me that Dylan does know what he’s doing and I can just leave him to get on with it!