I'm getting ready for my first big show of the season this weekend, and I really want to get a really difficult jumping session in to boost my confidence and make the hunter courses I'm doing seem really simple and do-able for my horse.
My horse is an old hat at everything and is bored to death of it. Any ideas to spice up the jumps and make them super scary or different?
I'm planning on taking a barrel and standards & making a really skinny jump, putting a cooler over a simple pole & standard jump and simulating a corner jump with poles and a barrel. Any thing else would be fantastic!
I wouldn't shoot for scary, but different is good =) Jumps off the corner are great, roll backs, gymnastics are good for you and your horse and always are fun! Set 3 jumps up so you can jump them on a figure 8(one in the middle of the 8, one at the top, and one at the bottom). I have more ideas, but am not sure how to explain them on here =) Have fun!
I know something that wakes D up if he is getting bored in the warm-up ring is jumping the jumps at an angle. He really gets excited when we do 45 degree angle jumps! ear forward and just perfect! he loves it! lol.
I once saw a video of O'Conner jumping a ridiculous singe barrel (stood vertical) with a single pole on top of it. It looked bizarre...and I always thought it was crazy. The other scary jump I've seen had standards with waving flags on them...freaked the horses freaks...because the flags were waving around in the breeze.
Just get anything you can around the barn and house, as long as they're safe, to put on the jumps. Horse blanks laid over jumps, get 2 poles and a blue tarp and make a liverpool, get some fake flowers from walmart, put a hay bale under a vertical, pine tree limbs under a jump, etc.
Try a jumper course. You don't have to do the speed, but the sharp turns, random changes in direction. And never do the same course twice. Keep him on his toes so he never knows where he's going. Then at the shows, he will be paying attention to you. Really skinny jumps are good too for keeping a horse on his toes. make it so the middle of the jump is the jump, there is no room for wiggling or shifting. it's hard sometimes but fun.
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