Hunting pony to jumping pony..help please

slumdog

slumdog

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Hiya, I'm new here *waves* I have 2 horses, a 6 year old tb and I've just (on Thursday!) got a 7 year old 14.2 connamara cross. Basically a bit of background on the pony, she was bought in a sale in Ireland 2 years ago to be sold over here. She was sent to a yard to be sold and for whatever reason they didn't sell her but they've done bit's and bobs with her including a lot of hunting. She's not a novice ride, she's very fast and hates any kind of contact. In fact when I went to see her I was given a list of things that she doesn't do or doesn't like. She'll also only be ridden in a happy mouth snaffle anything else makes her worse.

I rode her yesterday in the field and she was fine, later on I took her to my friends ménage down the road. She was fine in walk, trot and canter. My friend put a jump up on the diagonal and she jumped it without any problems, but unfortunately she carried on and leapt the 4ft ménage fence out into the car park :( luckily the top rail broke and she manage to land, she jumped me out of the saddle and I ended up on my bum on the concrete. We were both fine and I got straight back on (you know that horrible sick feeling when you know you HAVE to get back on lol!) I jumped it again and although she didn't jump out again (thank god!) she was very rushed and if I tried to hold her back she just got in a complete mess with her strides I think because she can't cope with being held back, even though we were only jumping 2 foot.
I'm sure it's because she's done nothing but hunt for two years that's made her like this, to be fair the pony has balls lol, but I can't have it jumping into a crowd at a show or something!

Does anyone have experience of anything similar? I'm going to try and get a trainer as although I'm confidant and I can ride, I feel I need a bit of help with this one! Any advice welcome :-)
 
I know its boring but flatwork, flatwork and more flatwork. I would put jumping on hold until you can get her really listening to you on the flat. You should be able to do lateral work, extending and collecting of strides in all paces and most of all control.

Jumping is just dressage with bumps. :)

p.s there's a rule that you have to post pictures when introducing your neddies. :D
 
i have a pony that did a load of hunting and hardly anything else when we bought him! (which was a little while ago) and we just worked on my dressage and flatwork, including lots of groundwork to earn his respect, because he is quite strong and fast when jumping! so i just worked on getting him slow and steady before adding in tiny jumps and polework. Groundwork works really well to because he had no respect on the ground, wouldnt back up or anything, but now when i literally put one finger on his chest he will walk bakwards as many steps as i want, and this has helped a lot with his respect for me in the saddle! hope this helps, please keep us posted! :D
kath :)
 
I agree with kokopelli. When you do start jumping again, start from scratch with poles & small grids.
Actually, I think all connie x jumping ponies should be given to me for free!
 
Agree with the above, flatwork is the way to go. You could always put some jumps up when doing your flatwork and ignore them! So jumps up in school doesn't equal excitement, they're just part of the general surroundings. Once the flatwork is sorted, then go for the poles, then grids, then small jumps etc, always stopping before it gets too exciting.

Sounds like a fun pony though!
 
Hi everyone! Thanks for your help! I've just hacked her yesterday and today as she must have bashed her leg pretty hard to have snapped the top rail and I wanted to take it a bit easy! But she's fine anyway so as from tomorrow it'll be lots of flat work! Should I introduce trotting poles or literally leave any type of pole for a while? I hope I can get her right, she's so scopey and she'd make a brilliant jumping pony. As long as we can stay in the arena lol! I'm not sure how to post pics, can anyone help? Don't want to be breaking the rules already ;) lol x
 
Once her flatwork is reasonably steady then trotting over poles could be used for schooling on the flat with, but I'd be inclined to wait till she is working in a calm manner, last thing you need is poles being locked on to from the other side of an arena!
 
You can introduce a cross pole with a pole before and after [five metres from cross pole] just do this as part of the flat work rather than making it the start of jump training. I think you are very brave, I would be trying a grackle noseband, and a running martingale
 
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