Advice in Teaching Youngster to Jump

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meganwinder

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Right, I've recently got a 4 year old, 13'2 skewbald cob x welsh sec c
His names timmy (Kingsley Chicocoa) and before he came to me he was left in a field doing nothing for 6 months.
We've progressed a lot in flat work and hacking (did out 1st show the other day, came 4th out of 20 in showing coloured class) Now we're hacking out on the south downs doing everything. in schooling, we're walk trot cantering poles and i'm introducing him to jumping.
he's shown me he can jump and hasn't refused once, he's very willing to please bless him.
We've done about 2ft3, but he can only approach them in trot as he finds the transition to canter a little tricky (basically runs into it) and his striding isn't great in jumping!
has anyone got any tips like free lunging, lunging? keep it up or any techniques that will help improve his jumping.
thankyou :)
 
My boss free lunges her event horses as she finds it helps them sort out where to put their legs and how to approach and basically teach themselves which i agree is a much better way than having them worry about someone on top as well :P
At uni as well. They did a study on 2 3 year old stallions teaching themselves to jump and how their jump differed over a certain amount of time as they grew more confident and stronger. The results haven't been anaylysed yet but will be really interesting when they do.
Its how i am planning on teaching my own next year as when i was backing him this year at 3 i decided to pop him over a 1ft jump on the lunge and it was really difficult and it didn't really help to inspire him at all and he just dribbled over it.

Best way is to start off with one fence along the side with sort of like a funnel so they can refuse or anything. start off small and as they get better, put a double in as that will help their footing even more :)
 
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