How to Teach Your Horse to Jump

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By mis4monopoly
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Teach Your Horse to Jump

This article will teach you how to train your horse to jump.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Horse
Experienced rider
Jump Standards
Jump Poles

Step 1

Introduce your horse to the poles. Start by just walking your horse over poles placed on the ground. Start with just a single pole.
Step 2

When your horse can confidently walk over the poles, move on to trotting over them. Always make sure your horse goes over the center of the pole. If your horse balks or attempts to duck around the pole, keep him moving steadily forward with your leg, and gently guide him to the middle with your reins.
Step 3

Set up a line of trotting poles. Trotting poles are 5 poles in a line set about 5 feet apart. You may need to adjust the distance depending on your horses length of stride, 5 feet is average, but if your horse has a short stride (ponies especially) you may need to shorten the distance a little. Play around with it until your horse can trot through the line without hitting any poles.
Step 4

Next add a small cross rail 9 feet after the last trotting pole. Guide your horse over the trotting poles, and then get into jumping position as you go over the cross rail. The trotting poles should help your horse get the correct rythem and distance to the small jump.
Step 5

When your horse can confidently and consistently do that sequence, you may remove the trotting poles. He should pop over the small jump without a problem. Now you can start adding more fences one at a time in different areas of the arena. On a young or inexperienced horse always keep the fences low to start, work slowly, so you do not intimidate the horse.
Step 6

You can slowly increase the size and difficulty of the jumps as you progress. Should your horse start refusing or ducking out of fences, that is a sign you are pushing him to fast. Go back to a smaller fence to regain his confidence, and then slowly build from there. Good luck!

Comments

rosaliehale said

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on 4/29/2009 Really good article, 5 stars. But maybe you should edit to point out that always use an odd number of poles. Horses have different vision to us and could mistake two poles as two sides of a ditch and panic.