Loose Jumping Youngsters....

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Deefa

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Hi
I would like some advice/opinions on loose jumping youngsters. I have a 2yr old (3 on May 1st) who i am hoping to event in the future(he is my first baby horse so its a learning curve for us both!). He is a big youngster who currently stands at 17.1/2 and is 3/4 TB 1/4 ID
I have been asked by a freind if i would like to share hire costs and travelling to a local indoor school to loose jump/school her older horse and have half the time each. This would be in march/april time. So my youngster would be nearly 3.

I am just worried about jumping him to soon as he is so big. He has matured alot over the last month or so (levelled up and filled out a little) but still looks babyish. It would only be a max of 2'6/2'9
What would you do?
 
If he's that big it would likely be just like stepping over something for him anyway.

As long as you don't over do it and make sure he doesn't scare himself he'll be fine, it will be good for him to work it out for himself a while before he does anything with you on his back.
 
Don't know much about young horses so I will leave that to people who know what they're talking about
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But wow 17hh at 2yrs old!!!!
 
A lot of colts going for grading have to loose jump and ours did this year so we popped him over a couple when he was 2.5yrs old and then left it that. Hasn't done him any harm and he seemed to really enjoy it.
Like you say start him with a couple of cross poles and see how he gets on. When you think about what they get up to in the field and bucking and jumping around playing a couple of small jumps really doesn't seem that big of a deal. Just make sure he's all booted up and have fun.
Hope you enjoy.
 
Bloody hell he's going to be HUGE! One of piper's field mates is 16.3 (same age a Golli too) and still growing - looks like she'll make 18hh at least
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I wouldn't be wanting to do much jumping at all with him (even in couple of months time) but a trip to an indoor school would be a fabulous learning experience for him.

I'd take him and just get him going calmly over trotting poles in-hand, but mainly an oppertunity to load, travel and see new places.
 
Don't know the answer but my 8-m-o ID filly frightened the life out of me today. She got excited when she saw me throwing some bread to our chickens. Next thing I knew she had jumped the four-foot fence into their enclosure!!! Thankfully she seems none the worse for the experience. I think I've aged a bit!
 
I would give it a whirl - we loose schooled our two yesterday. Never actually done it with mine and he's 19 this year but it was to do something with them as we've not been able to ride and we thought it'd be fun for them.

Something about how my horse went tells me he's done it before but seeing as I've had him since a 4 yo he must have done it when quite young. Either that or he was just a lot more chilled out about it all than I thought.

We gave them both a little lunge first and walked them through the but we were going to use as the fence. We just judged how they reacted as to what we asked them to do.

I would advise to just let him go round, see how he reacts, then slowly introduce a pole and raise it up to a cross etc etc. I think the key is for them to relax about it. If he's stressed out about it then don't push it as it'll all be very strange to him.

Personally I think you are likely to be pleasantly surprised. One think I would advise is don't go to too big an indoor school - we tried that once in the past with my sister's younger horse and it was useless as it was too big for us to be iat each end of the arena quick enough - very knackering! Lol
 
Thanks for the advice everyone
smile.gif

Will definatly book to go then and see how it goes. He is rather a chilled out boy so hopeing he will stay calm and relaxed!
 
We loose jumped our 3 year old who stands 17hh for the BEF Futurity last August, we took him to a local sport horse centre and over an 8 weekd period of going once every two weeks we built him up to the height which was required by the BEF. Little bit will not hurt
 
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