Tried some pole work last night....

[Lill]

And well it was interesting! Don't think Blue quite understood! Had a placing pole and 2 canter poles in front of that all with 4 paces between them... he couldn't canter the poles for some reason and jumped the first and trotted the second and the popped the crosspole jump

SO took the two poles away so there was only a placing pole and put the back part up in to a decent sized spread... this seemed to confuse him even more and we jumped this very strangely! Took placing pole away and he was fine!

Whats going on??

 

[GinaGem]

Hi ya,

Have you tried doing canter poles without a jump?

xxx

 

[Lill]

Hey Gina!

Well no not really! Have done one stride doubles but with just poles on the ground and built them up into jumps but thats the closest he's prob got! Fantastic with trotting poles and he's done a jump with a placing pole before and managed fine so can't quite understand what was going on last night!

 

[Rambo]

If he hasn't used a single placing pole before, then 3 was probably a bit much

Probably wouldn't have put the fence up until he was happy with it smaller either.

Try laying a single pole on the ground and gett him cantering over that, then build up to two, then three etc...then introduce a small x-pole perhaps

 

[Lill]

He'll canter over one pole on the ground fine but he was sorta jumping them and it was messing him up! Thought he may be able to figure it out as he got the bounce the other week on the 2nd try!

He was jumping the cross pole with placing pole ok but when i put it up to the spread he couldn't do it so easily - i think this might be because he tends to take off a bit further away than he should do for bigger fences perhaps?

 

[GinaGem]

Yeah i agree, he probably just doesn't get the concept of cantering the poles so just take it back to basics and build it up