144cm jumping 1.27m

Teresalee

Teresalee

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Just wanted some thoughts on our lovely 4yr old Connemara mare. We imported her in August of 2018 and she has been produced by my 13yr old daughter and my friend. Just a heads upp. All the videos on my daughters youtube are of the pony jumping. This does not mean we jump the pony everyday or exxcesivly and many of the videos are from previous in the year or last year when the pony was 3, but have just been uploaded all on the same day. She is BSJA registered and will hopefully be competing in June. Please can all like and subscribe to my daughters channel for more videos.
 
Oh wow. The pony is terribly young for that sort of thing. And jumping a one off fence is very different from managing a course. You won't be starting at anything like that kind of height. I know BS ponies can be backed young and competed from 4 - but they also break down much earlier. I'm not anti BS - my daughter competed very successfully in BS Juniors for many years. We've had a fair string off competition ponies - some of whom were very young. (She's now in Uni so focus has changed but we still compete)

From that perspective - I would prefer so see a quality canter rather than a flat out approach, and a bit more balance coming in. It looks a bit pushed and rushed to me. For one fence over the pony's height limit - yes understandable (if not approveable) but you can't tackle a course like that. But it is one video and one fence.
 
I just had a quick flick through the other videos. While you are understandably very proud I think you need to take a step back. My fat, hairy cobby pony could clear that if I chased her into it like that. What she could not do is jump a 90cm course in balance. The one video of a jumping exercise shows the same jumping style. It seems to be very popular with less experienced teenagers at the minute.

Now is the time to develop the partnership properly. You wont get round a decent up to height and width course with your current technique. Get a good instructor on board and take it right back to basics, then when the pony is stronger and more confident you will be able to utilise her scope.

If you are looking to increase your daughters social media following youtube isnt the best platform for that. Instagram and Facebook are much better. In this instance the video was embedded into the post so in order to get to the part where I could like and follow I had to go out of my way and open the video in another tab. Most people wont bother doing this, you have to make it as easy as possible.
 
Not to be rude, but I cannot fathom why anyone would want to jump a very young and still maturing pony over those heights. It's quite clear looking at the approach and jumping style that the pony has missed several crucial steps in her jumping education. She's rushing her approaches and is not jumping comfortably or with "scope", she looks like she's struggling to me. Sparingly jumping her over small (60cm-80cm) grids at this stage of her education would set her up to succeed later on and give her the best shot at long term soundness.

It's all well and good to get her over to grandstand the height she is jumping so you can post videos cooing about how awesome she is, but I assure you there will be plenty (perhaps the majority) of people disapproving of it.
 
I can also understand that you are proud and your pony is lovely, honest and scopey. But as a word of warning - a kid on our yard had a 13.2 pony like that. At 4 she won a puissance class jumping over 130cm at a local show. She got loads of public praise and private disapproval! By the end of the year that pony would not jump a stick on the ground and was sold to my YO. She needed turning away for 6 months before being brought back very slowly. She is a cracking pony now but her early experiences were very harmful mentally for her.
 
It gets worse.

You jumped this pony over 1m 20 and took it cross country schooling as a three year old ?




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Your daughter is very young so I don't want her to feel disheartened by negative feedback. She is a confident rider with a cracking pony and I am sure they can go on to do well. it will be easy to dismiss/irnore the above comments but I hope you can recognise that people with a lot of experience are giving sound advice that will help both daughter and pony progress. At the moment you are risking injury and sourness. My daughter has a 5 year old with awesome scope and it is so tempting to do more with her. But just because she CAN does not mean we are going to ask her to. She is staying at 80cm in competition all season and no more than 90/95 in training.
 
You're right, AE, my shock should be reserved for the adults. The child is not at fault here and probably neither is the adult, who is being badly advised by someone.

OP, please get your talented daughter and her talented pony a proper flat work and show jumping in instructor.
 
So OP is the "13yo daughter" in question? Her channel has gone so Im guessing thats the end of that. Surely she must know its not beneficial to the pony by the way she started to defend herself in the original post (although jumping at 3 is to me horrifying). OP, you've had loads of advice here, just take it slow. Why do you want to be jumping high so quickly? Jumping a course is very different from jumping a stand alone fence of that height, most ponies could jump 1.25/1.30 so its not particularily impressive, its sad in this case due to the ponies age.
 
MM, go easy. I did lots of things on my ponies as a kid that I wouldn't do now. If you need to ask a child why they want to be jumping high, it makes me feel like you either didn't jump as a child, or can't remember being one! When I was younger it was cool to jump 'big' fences. I also did stupid things like canter round bareback without a hat and hack in the arse end of no where without telling anyone where I was going etc. As a child you don't have the awareness you do as an adult and it makes me annoyed seeing adults trying to make a child feel bad about themselves with comments like 'That's not particularly impressive'.

No one's born with experience/hindsight, we all do our best as we go with the knowledge we have at the time. At 13, it never would have occurred to me that jumping a 4 y/o might be bad for it (certainly not that I can remember, anyway). I didn't spend hours reading about various opinions and ailments as I have done over time.

I'm sure that OP simply doesn't know why it's better to wait a little while and I can fully understand why jumping big as a child (and an adult!) is something you would be proud of.
 
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