Should sports horses hack out?

[Elf On A Shelf]

I have to say, I do most of my XC schooling on hacks - popping logs, walls and streams, going up and down steep hills in various paces. Must be hard to do if you never hack out, I guess you'd only get the experience of farm rides and XC schooling fields.

You'd be hard pushed to find anywhere within a 10mile radius of here to get off of tarmac let along grass, streams, logs and the likes!

 

[Honey08]

Yes, I guess we're lucky. We lack long canter tracks and gallops though. I guess its what I've grown up with, there never were XC schooling fields etc when I was little, so you had to be creative on hacks to learn to do XC.

 

[tallyho!]

I'm lucky too.... I'd never consciously choose a place where the riding was poor, and actively choose the riding out and plentiful grazing over facilities but I guess some people pay through the nose for those exact things, compromising space. I keep on poorly facilitated farms where riding is abundant and jumps are fallen trees and old barrells in borrowed woodland and have never done too badly competing...