Learning to jump can be fun and exhilarating. When we learn to jump, we've established all the safe basics that bring us to wanting our next new challenge. As a rider, we're trying to create that partnership that we ride with the horse going over obstacles similar to the historical background that brought us to this. That was, that farmers had to get from field to field often jumping brick walls, wood ledges, things like that. As a rider, we have to keep our basic riding position extremely tight and strong. Anything that this horse presents we must be able to manage it. When we learn to jump, the biggest and most important piece is how to establish a good rhythm with our horse. We want them in a forward canter in a way that we can almost put it to a rhythm of a one- two, one-two, never changing, always there. When we get that horse to that rhythm and they're honest and careful about their jump style, it's really fun because we can almost forget that the jump is there. We like to proceed as though the jump just comes underneath a normal canter stride. However, the rider has the big role in that. We want to be sure that we don't what we call "jump ahead of the horse." That would be where we're so concerned about the jump, we interfere with that rhythm giving that horse almost a fearful extra step. After we've established good rhythm, good position, we want to be sure that we are very straight to the jump. We'd like to make our jumps come right underneath us in the center and create a good, solid, straight line from one end of the arena to the other. Our rider is demonstrating a simple, figure eight pattern of jumps. As we go to a more competitive show arena, we're going to seek horses that would bring us to bigger turns, more obstacles and certainly as the rider progresses, something of a higher nature. Again, a very self-limiting--we can start with the most simple, a log on the ground, we call a "cavalletti" to advancing up to jumps of greater heights, sometimes up into, like 4 feet.
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