Teaching bravery over bigger tracks?

[kdoug]

Looking for exercises to build a small horses bravery over some slightly larger tracks, any ideas are welcomed please! I'll just give you a slight back story on my boy though so you know what's revelvant for him! He's a 15hh Connemara who was extremely green, unruly and never seen coloured poles when I bought him. 1 year on we have *started* (we do still sometimes get caught out!) to get over the UTTER terrors of fillers and scary arenas, and now looking forward! He confidently jumps courses of 90cm at home with a few metres thrown in, but gets a little nervy and shys once they hit courses of 1m with some 1.10m. So looking for some tips and advice for building him up over this height? (looking to be confidently eventing at 90cm next year, maybe a few 100s at the end of the season.) Thanks so much, and sorry for the long blurb!

 

[paddi22]

keep it small and creep the size up gradually so the horse hardly notices. Hire a good arena with a full set of showjumps and get a lesson over them. A year isn't a long time, so be careful you aren't overfacing him. If he was mine i wouldn't be pushing him out of his comfort zone at shows till i was confident we had the issues sorted. I know you always get a dodgy jump that can spook even a confident horse. But i'd never the raise the heights in a showjumping comp until i knew the horse was 100% at the lower level.

I have a ish who is well able to jump, but like yours hadn't the experience around poles. I kept him over smaller courses for nearly two years, but glad i did as he is confident now. I'd rather take him into a ten 90s courses and have us coming out confident, then do one 1.10 course where he's not 100% sure going in. It's so easy to knock their confidence in themselves (and you) if they do a bad round or get a scare.

If he can jump metres at home, you will have no problem doing 90s eventing as he is. So why not keep schooling the metre at home for a season, do the 90s and then he will tell you when hes confident enough to go up a level. I think if you start pushing him too much out of his confidence zone you will set him back. If he was mine I'd stay 90s for a season. I'd hire a proper arena with a full set of spooky jumps and get lessons there. And id practice grids at home, playing with the heights and widths of the last fence, just to get an idea of what his scope actually is, and to gradually build up his confidence over heights.

 

[be positive]

I agree with paddi22 you want to be very careful at this stage that you are not overfacing him in your quest to go higher in the future, keep him within his comfort zone and get him 100% confident at 90 out competing, if sj the jo will be a bit bigger, using grids at home to build his confidence in jumping bigger fences and coping with the distances.

He is at a disadvantage not because of his height but because his stride length may be slightly less than the optimum distance that courses are set at, this is usually not an issue until the fences get a bit bigger so his has to use more energy to jump each fence and then may lose a bit of distance over the ground, so make sure you do plenty of work on being able to open and shorten his stride.

Be very careful about moving on too soon, if he is genuine he will possibly start to struggle in combinations or related distances and will then find he has to stop rather than plough through a jump, I know someone who was doing really well at BE90 on a lovely 15 hander they moved up to 100 before they were totally prepared the little horse could not manage 2 stride combinations and ended up stopping, even moving back a level did not get his confidence back to where it was and he became a very unreliable show jumper, xc was never an issue as he was more forward.

Just to add bravery is about confidence, you cannot teach it you build on what they have little by little taking time to ensure that they understand what is required and if they do have a blip you always drop back at least one level so they can build up again.