Steps into water- advice pelase!

M

Minifletcher

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Took pony xc schooling yesterday, he is quite young & inexperienced but willing to try, most of the time. Jumped lots of little things and some bigger too, including 3 2'3ish steps down, which he did boldly.

Until it came to the water. The time before yesterday he jumped the diddy 1'6 max into the water no problem once but refused point blank to do it again, even with leads, and every sort of encouragement.

He refused to go in again yesterday. He is not frightened of water, we jumped up the step, trotted straight through no problem. But not the step down.

Anyone suggest something I might try, please??
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hope this advice is ok,as your pony is young and inexperienced then l would not bother asking him to jump off a step into water,at this moment in his education you are probably not likely to come across this at a competition,keep up the water schooling but dont worry about it for now he needs to learn that its all fun and no worries!!
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I would walk through every puddle, every slope with a puddle at the bottom. My horse loathes steps into water so I just do not confront it and when his blood is up eventing he is usually fine. They need a lot of confidence with water as it is not natural for them to be in it. Just keep building upon it slowly.
 
Agree with everyone else, don't worry about an actual step into water, just get him walking, trotting and cantering into and out of water. Let him play in it as well if he will and make it as fun as possible and give loads of encouragement!!!
 
Thanks all, you are just confirming my thoughts. I go in every puddle I can find, up and down banks, over ditches,everything! He had a problem with puddles to begin with but hunting over the lakes left behind by the torrential rain we had a Christmas helped with that! He has quite a stubborn streak (part NF) and just switches off when he doesnt want to do something, apparently you can see it in his eyes when this happens!

He is such a nice pony and I fancy going intro next year (he is 6 this year) if we can conquer this!
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