mare jumps trot/ canter poles..

Firstly don't anticipate it. Walk over poles on the ground until shes relaxed with that, then up it to trot etc once she realises its much easier to not jump. This is what I've done in the past with any that rushed/jumped poles :)
 
flurryjuno said:
Firstly don't anticipate it. Walk over poles on the ground until shes relaxed with that, then up it to trot etc once she realises its much easier to not jump. This is what I've done in the past with any that rushed/jumped poles :)
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Thank you, I have tried to walk her over them first but she then still jumps over them after
 
So does mine, she's always done it no matter what. I've had her 5 years, she was a good SJ before she became my happy hack, she's 13 years old and still believes everything must be jumped!
 
My welshie was the same for ages. I just kept doing it in walk until she stopped, loads of praise. Then in trot, over and over again
For months she would do it everytime asked to walk or trot over a pole. Now she only does it in canter. Soon she will just canter it.

But it can take a long time
 
No advice but my mare also believes poles are for jumping. I embrace the jumping without having to build jumps. Depending on my mare's mood we can do anything from 18" to 3ft over a pole.
 
Mine did this for aaaaages, and we couldn't solve it. Until a genius instructor had the idea of, instead of each pole, using two poles end to end with a gap in the middle. Start with the gap a foot or so wide and do all of your pole work working the horse through the gap. Then as the horse gets calmer about going through the gap, gradually make the gap smaller, work through until it's calm, and then smaller and smaller until it's a couple of inches and eventually you can put the two poles flush end to end and keep working. Then add in single poles and gradually wean over to them. Keep some gappy poles somewhere in the arena to work over to restore calmness if your horse gets a bit boomy over the solid poles once you're working on those. Over the course of about 6 weeks, by doing this even for short periods 3 times a week, starting out with gappy poles each session then moving to normal poles when she'd got calm, and going back to close gappy poles whenever she got a bit boomy, our time spent on gappy poles got shorter each time, and we have now completely resolved my horse's pole issues which had persisted for years. It sounds time consuming and you need someone on the ground at first to shuffle your poles, but it really really worked for us.
 
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