Why does he launch cross poles, then pop over bigger jumps?

welshponylover

welshponylover

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Hi,
Just thought this was a little odd. It may be due to the fact that he gets over excited, but Brommy launches tiny crosspoles and clears them with MILES to spare, but then as you have a straight pole about 2ft and above her starts jumping it correctly. He does get quite over excited quite a lot when jumping...
Also he nearly always refuses the first jump! He just does it to muck me around i think but maybe its connected? I don't think its my riding as i have jumped a variety of different horses and never had that problem!!
PLEASE REPLY :confused:

x

36064_123401.jpg

^^As you can see he does launch them - this wasn't a one off pic! ^^
 
Hiya, I am no expert but I think he may be refusing the first jump as a 'test' to see what he can get away with....I know a few cheeky ponies that have done that.

With the cross pole - I remember hearing somewhere that horses will sometimes clear a cross pole at the size of the sides (where the poles rest) as that is what they see as they approach / go over (because their eyes are on the side). Not sure if this is correct but if you look at the pic that is about the height he looks to be jumping.

Is he quite young? Maybe he will settle down into it with time. It also may be worth doing some small grid exercises with him to get him thinking about what is coming next rather than launching over a single jump.

I am sure other people on here will be able to give you some better advice but good luck with him!
 
He's obviously a talented little jumper! I would guess that he maybe finds the smaller jumps easy and therefore a bit boring so he launches at them whereas once they get bigger he has to think about what he's doing abit more and actually sits back and jump nicely.
A horse I used to know was an amazing SJ but would always have fences down if smaller than 3'6 because they wernt big enough to make him concentrate. I guess this is the prob your having with your boy.
My suggestion would be lots of grid work to make him back off abit and listen to you.
 
If you look at a cross pole there is no ground line, possibly he is struggling to see a stride. Perhaps put a placing pole and see what happens?
 
Grids - set up a few jumps on a straight line like a combinations eg 3 jumps in a row, one cross pole, then a stride into the next cross pole, then a bounce or a stride into the last cross pole. You can vary whether you do 1 or 2 strides and/or a bounce, and you can start off with cross poles and the progress to straights. Make sure you have your striding correct for him though as you don't want to confuse the matter by getting the wrong striding.

It just keeps them thinking and backs them off the jumps a bit - if he is thinking about the next jump he may not launch so much into the first one!!!

Hope it goes well!!!
 
Heya x I broke my pony myself and he did this xx its to do with how horses see xx he can only see the edges of the cross pole where it's highest so he over jumps it just to make sure he's cleared it xx my pony did it all the time xx
 
Mine jumps crosses huge and doesn't respect anything lower than 2ft or so. He doesn't go through them, instead he gives them LOADS of space, goes at them sideways and prats around. Anything over 2ft and he generally starts to listen to me more, not go sideways and gives them a reasonable amount of room.

He's just excitable when it comes to jumping. The higher it gets, the more he behaves.
 
I usually blame google. Pull up old threads and people respond without checking the date. But at this age, surely they're archived?!

Flogging woodchip? I thought they were flogging a dead horse!
 
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