Munstead XC - nice bit of lateral work shown! And a napping qu

Bernster

Bernster

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I’m sharing these vids for two reasons. Mainly cos the commentator was so sweet and the first one does make me laugh. My naughty nappy pony 🙄 And the 2nd one to show that we can motor on, but only when pointing towards home it seems...And so to the question. Lots of people in the 60 had trouble with napping round the 1st part of the course. How do people deal with this, and any tips for improving on it?

Lessons always seem to involve groups sticking together, with a bit of going away but nothing like a comp environment, and I’m finding it hard to arrange a solo xc lesson. I’m too scared to go xc on my own just yet, I’ll admit it, so what else can I try? F is great to hack solo and he’s fine xc in contained fields - it’s the bigger BE type courses that we’ve had issues with.

Or am I being impatient, as we’ve only done a handful of xc comps and this is our 3rd ever ODE; and the 1st one this year?

[video=youtube_share;awBPOSVL9Xw]https://youtu.be/awBPOSVL9Xw[/video]

[video=youtube_share;7zugx4HkfoA]https://youtu.be/7zugx4HkfoA[/video]
 
Oh, bless him! He'll get there! You can always bring him along on one of our x-country outings, and we can make sure he has to do everything independently!

Your other pony thinks he's weird - she watched the vid, and said "Hold my beer..."
 
Auslander said:
Oh, bless him! He'll get there! You can always bring him along on one of our x-country outings, and we can make sure he has to do everything independently!

Your other pony thinks he's weird - she watched the vid, and said "Hold my beer..."
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I would LOVE that, yes please ��. I know, she would have rocketed around, although we did have napping issues when we first started too, would you believe, and she was quicker than F at spinning back for home!
 
I loved the commentator, she was lovely, I was there helping a friend. Also your OH sounds a total sweetie!

In all honesty I probably would have taken my reins into one hand and given him a few decent cracks on the arse with the whip when you came through those trees and to a walk, his napping is really half arsed, he’s not trying to rear or spin and I think a good bit of firm encouragement and perhaps a slightly stingy bottom would have got him going. Munstead was quite tricky I think as you had the lorry park on your right as you were leaving the start box so not ideal for the more backwards ones.

I took my youngster xc schooling with a friend the other day. We didn’t jump a thing over than a few logs, he started napping to his friend so the whole session was spent completely away from said friend and he threw everything at me, rearing bucking spinning but the success was being able to point him in any direction and have no issues so it was very educational for us both- just not from a jumping perspective. He did his first proper ODE with his young jockey this weekend and bounded out of the startbox away from the other horses, picking up 6 time faults for being too fast!

Can you meet up with a fellow wobbleberry perhaps but do similar, getting him to work well away from the other Horse?

He is a really lovely looking horse btw!
 
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It is very different and I do think it's very hard to replicate, I'm sure half of our trouble, especially round familiar courses was the arrival of all the cars near fences that aren't usually there :rolleyes3:. I did use to love getting halfway round as the ride home was lovely!

How did he come out of the start box? Frank would jump away great and then get slower and slower towards the first fence :D, what would he have done had you got after him and razzed him up a bit?
 
Looking good - well done for getting out and getting going! The second video looks much better.

Michen said:
In all honesty I probably would have taken my reins into one hand and given him a few decent cracks on the arse with the whip when you came through those trees and to a walk, his napping is really half arsed, he’s not trying to rear or spin and I think a good bit of firm encouragement and perhaps a slightly stingy bottom would have got him going.
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Absolutely. Anything napping here gets a smacked arse.

(Caveat for the inevitable: obviously, any suspicion of physical issues, or gaps in training aside...)
 
What a sweetheart your horse is! You are both more than capable of storming around.

Honestly ... I think you need to just be a bit more positive about everything, he is a bit unsure (which is not uncommon) but he needs you to say ‘come on mate get in with it’, and not vocally but a) with your legs and if needs be reinforce it if he drops off your leg.

This type you need to ride it like you stole it from the outset, they soon get the idea
 
I don't think I've seen him in action before he looks very similar to a grey horse I used to have at livery, in both looks and temperament, with ours we had to really sharper him up and get him as fit as possible with loads of canter work probably around 30% of his exercise time , he did some form of cantering almost every day which could be hacking although we are very limited, in my fields in the form of interval training or in the arena where it was mixed up with his schooling by doing some work in medium and back as well as some jump training, the main aim was to get him taking the rider forward at ALL times and the reason I mention it is that to me yours is thinking backwards and even at the end does not look as if he is really taking you forward, although it is better and he is jumping out of his stride nicely, he lands and just continues to canter when you should be encouraging him to land and go.

I would do some work at home with a few fences set up and work on getting away from them with more purpose until he lands and takes you, you still need to come back to jump but he will learn to think forward if he lands and goes, this does translate to xc and helping with a napping issue as well as building up confidence, group sessions xc schooling can make a horse more clingy so if doing one bring this up at the start so the instructor can spend a bit of time helping with it, the other thing easily done at home is to set up a "start box" and practice getting out at speed, if someone can count you down to mock it up that is useful and you only need to go for a short spin each time, it is the getting away with purpose he needs to learn not to dwell and dither thinking about it.
 
Some fantastic feedback and tips, thank you everyone. Will def work on these.

Michen - I do need to set us up in away that means we can deal with this, and practice it, you’re absolutely right. But I’m also a bit scared, which is a lot of the problem I’m sure, so haven’t done it before. He’s generally pretty good even when he’s napping, as he’s not too quick (as you can see!), but he can drop a shoulder and spin and he’s had me off doing that, so I didn’t get after him as much as I should have.

Ester - we came out the box ok, a bit backward but over the 1st. Like Frank, we ground to a halt coming up to 2 and didn’t really start to move until the home leg.

I was a bit worried about overuse of the whip too. He’d had two smacks between 2 and 3 but tbh I never really got after him with legs or whip and I froze a bit, and resorted to just shouting at him haha.

BP that’s spot on, he needs more engine power in everything we do and I’m focusing on that in our lessons. I ride quite defensively when jumping, which I need to address, and tend to hold him too much into and over a fence, plus I don’t really get the difference between speed v forwardness.
 
Well done on getting out there

BP's post above is very good - it's so easy with a slightly backward thinking horse to settle at least 50% of the time for 'oh that will do', because they are basically doing what you ask, just in their own sweet time. You have to be really strict with yourself and keep checking that they are actually on your aids.
 
I totally feel your pain, honestly the other day when boggle was being so happy to his friend schooling I was utterly terrified, it took every bit of self control not to kick my feet out of the stirrups and jump off but managed to get myself together and crack on with working him through it as if I wasn’t scared.

Nerves are a horrible thing! Xx

Bernster said:
Some fantastic feedback and tips, thank you everyone. Will def work on these.

Michen - I do need to set us up in away that means we can deal with this, and practice it, you’re absolutely right. But I’m also a bit scared, which is a lot of the problem I’m sure, so haven’t done it before. He’s generally pretty good even when he’s napping, as he’s not too quick (as you can see!), but he can drop a shoulder and spin and he’s had me off doing that, so I didn’t get after him as much as I should have.

Ester - we came out the box ok, a bit backward but over the 1st. Like Frank, we ground to a halt coming up to 2 and didn’t really start to move until the home leg.

I was a bit worried about overuse of the whip too. He’d had two smacks between 2 and 3 but tbh I never really got after him with legs or whip and I froze a bit, and resorted to just shouting at him haha.

BP that’s spot on, he needs more engine power in everything we do and I’m focusing on that in our lessons. I ride quite defensively when jumping, which I need to address, and tend to hold him too much into and over a fence, plus I don’t really get the difference between speed v forwardness.
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DabDab said:
Well done on getting out there

BP's post above is very good - it's so easy with a slightly backward thinking horse to settle at least 50% of the time for 'oh that will do', because they are basically doing what you ask, just in their own sweet time. You have to be really strict with yourself and keep checking that they are actually on your aids.
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Very very true and what my instructor keeps telling me. He looks smart enough to get away with it in a test to get reasonable scores, but I need to push for more. My sheet from Saturday said ‘be brave!’ 👍
 
It's very easy to freeze a bit when a horse freezes with you, some do down tools even more if you get after them, others take confidence from you saying come on get on with it. He almost just looks a bit lost in the big wide world and better when he has a fence to aim for in some ways. (I used to use my voice far too much, because I felt other things weren't working, looking back I was just being ineffective with my leg etc and overusing my voice meant that became ignored too!)

He looks like such a nice chap though I am sure there is a speedy comp horse waiting to come out :)
 
Bernster said:
Very very true and what my instructor keeps telling me. He looks smart enough to get away with it in a test to get reasonable scores, but I need to push for more. My sheet from Saturday said ‘be brave!’ ��
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Funnily enough that was what I constantly told the owner of the grey, she didn't really get it when used in the flat lessons and would respond with " I am not scared" but with this type you have to take a few risks of making an error to get the most out of them even in dressage, ours could get low 20's eventing if you pushed for everything but if left to his own devices he would get 30's because he just coasted using no energy.

I agree with the fact it is easy to settle for less than you should, these types often give no more than 50% 50% of the time so we did lots of asking for 100% with loads of walk breaks to give the riders a rest, in their own way they are far more difficult than forward going horses but when the penny does drop at least you know you can ride them rather than sit waiting for an exlosion.
 
To me it look like that nap started two fences earlier when you came back to trot with a very tentative approach which slowed even more to the jump in the trees.
Now two possibilities here
1) you asked him back to trot
2) he dropped back to trot.

If 1 then think about what message this sends to the horse 'oooh scary jump ahead, we need to be very careful' Followed by 'oooh, even more scary fence, really .really need to be careful.'
In this scenario you just have to push on. Ride positive and keep cantering. Forward forward forward, there is no backward for XC.

If 2 then horse is unsure By letting him continue to trot you confirm his fears then reinforce them at jump two. Here the horse need you to wear the brave pants (even if you don't believe them) and push on, get a bit excited, hell shout yehah if it helps but forward is a must.

If you want to do a one on one session I'm happy to meet you at MKEC some time. Not an instructor but do know my way around an XC course ;0. Not charge, just happy to support a wobble.
 
Bernster, I don't think you are a million of miles from me, if you ever want a 'distant' companion for xc schooling, then shout :)
I don't jump big these days as mount really only happy to 70, but am happy to be a mounted bod on legs to help give encouragement when needed even at a distance x
TFF, retired instructor/coach ;)
 
I'm not half as experienced as all the people who have already commented - so no advice from me.

I just wanted to say WELL DONE! You looked ace and persevered and I think you did fab :) I'm in awe of anyone going out and having a go at eventing, I'd love to do it but don't have the bottle. You pushed through your nerves and finished the round well :)

I too have a backwards horse so share your pain on that (though we don't compete!), he too can be very nappy when the mood strikes and when he's unsure. I know I need to push on with him too but sometimes if you're nervous it's difficult to get the message across!
 
Thanks again peeps. You’re all lovely.

PM - he did that, he napped from 1 all the way until 7 so it was hard work all that way around. I tried to get any kind of forwards but he was not being very obliging!

You and FF are awesome for offering to help, it’s a bit of an odd ask going out with someone then disappearing, but also having someone else near enough to help! Tsk. Would def like to work on that. MKEC is lovely, is that too far FF, was wondering if we could combine the outing ��

Amye, yep that’s my issue! It’s tough trying to keep us both brave haha.

RR, he’s great at pairs and in company generally, loves it. It’s the change from that to solo that bothers him. I could try more pairs with him to see if that helps As we work through this!
 
I always find pairs classes a huge help with green horses, but at some point you want to be able to go solo! Munstead is a lovely course, but you are never really on your own, you can always see "home", which as you found is great when you're heading back that way :D

I totally get that when you are concerned at the reaction you might get, you are less likely to be "brave"!! Maybe a few more pairs classes though would help you both to become more forward thinking and once he starts to really enjoy himself he will be less likely to be looking for escape routes.

Such a lovely horse :)
 
ester said:
If HHOers are taking PM out again could we endeavour to make sure he stays in one piece this time? :p
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PM is not planning to ride. Still very broken. I might manage a gentle hack but xc is out of the question. Haven't sat on a horse since that fateful evening. That said, never say never (I do love XC)
TBH I have never understood this group XC training thing where you all jump a fence from a short run up then then move on to next one. I much prefer to either do several in a row or approach a single fence from a distance. It needs to be real if it is any use as training.
Only time I use short approach to single fence is if teaching a method of jumping new type of fence but even that finishes with an approach from distance starting with a good canter then setting up as required.
 
I presumed you weren't riding but have seen the videos of people trying to ride over the top of their trainers while schooling ;)
 
The Fuzzy Furry said:
Bernster, I don't think you are a million of miles from me, if you ever want a 'distant' companion for xc schooling, then shout :)
I don't jump big these days as mount really only happy to 70, but am happy to be a mounted bod on legs to help give encouragement when needed even at a distance x
TFF, retired instructor/coach ;)
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I feel a plan coming together!
 
Plus PM, we had a very long hold on the xc due to a spectator getting mown down by a loose horse, so being on the ground may not be the safest place !!
 
How wonderful HHO is with all these offers of help! From looking at the videos I would agree you need to become a bit bolder - I totally understand that you aren't full of confidence but the more you do the better it will become. He's a lovely horse and just needs to be told to get on with the job, at present he is picking up on your insecurity. It's only the start of the season, after a few events I bet the pair of you are flying :)
 
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