raised trotting poles.

[serena2005]

when we have been doing rasied tortting poles recently, H does this really weird thing and it feels like hes going to fall over, so i lunged him today over them and watched what he does with his legs. and sometimes he really tried and gets it spot on but other times, i dont know wether its because hes being cheeky or just cant do it but he doesnt put down his outside front leg, over the last pole.

so if hes on the left rein, legt front goes down inbetween the 2 poles right leg bent, and he sort of hops over and lands on the left leg.
i thought he was doing it out of inexperience but then on his bad rein the does them perfectly.

anyone else had this problem? any ideas on what i can do to stop this? i tried shortening the stride but he just went through the poles...

any thoughts would be very grateful!

 

[Oaksflight]

How old is he? Perhaps just start with one raised pole and build them up in odd numbers?

 

[ru-fi-do]

I'm currently doing raised pole work with my girl at the moment, we have got up to using 5 poles at the moment, it took a while as it was easier for her to just jump them at first, so we went right back to the beginning with one pole then gradually added more. Now she has 6 poles and when warmong up we start by raising the middle one first then another one at a time. We also sometimes use a 'fan' of poles this way we can trot over the poles in different trots, i find this helps my girl as then she has to listen to me everytime we approach the poles rather than going the same speed all the time. hope this all makes sense and helps a little.

 

[leskaneen]

Hi,
we ve been doing raised poles with my welshie to try to get his head round the fact that running is bad and lifting is good.Once he starts to listen,my instructor alters the distance between the poles so that he really has to look,listen and concentrate.and this really seems to work !!
Mind you, down side is that now he s started looking where he s putting his feet,he s also started shying at grids out hacking,or jumping them-he obviously thinks he s being good doing this coz he gets praised in the school for lifting over things-Typical welshie !!