12ft is the average horses stride at canter - so in grids allow take off and landing distance.
For bounce they drop down and pick up - if you make it too long you'll make your horse struggle. Mine go on 4/5 of my strides (10 -12ft) (I have short strides)
Depend on your horses stride length quite a lot! Pickle I have to have it 5 for a bounce as he is a long strided horse and he jumps very long. Average length though is around 4 from what I have been told
Blue is thinking he's a bit of a smarty pants at the moment so wanna try something we haven't done to give him a bit of a challenge rather than just whacking the jumps up!
Best 1/2 stride too long and then shorten it if necessary! Mine has jumped them both as a nice big parallel before on 3 strides!! Cleared them both at 2'9" having bounced them the previous 3 times.... was bred to steeplechase tho!
A one stride double should be around 24 feet, 6feet landing-12 feet stride & 6feet to take off & over the jump.
The stride length of your horse should not make any difference. When a course is laid out the stride is set roughly at 12'. The course designer will not change it because you have a horse that has either a smaller or longer stride. You need to work on your strides to ensure your horse can canter to that particular stride pattern. If you don't do this you will encounter some serious problems when you are competing & are coming up short to a wide oxer.....ouch.