Training for Eventing, as with all the disciplines, needs us to take time to ensure that the horse is ready to take on the next challenge or the next level of difficulty in the work we are hoping to achieve. The warm up phase of a session is critical as it sets the mood for the session. The horse may initially be fresh, perhaps a bit spooky in an unfamiliar venue. Particularly young, green horses and ponies ought to be given the opportunity to settle and be confident to calmly go forward in the space they are working in before we tackle any challenging jumps. The ability to adjust the pace within the canter so that we have many available ‘gears’ or incremental variations of the canter from a collected gait right through to a gallop, is an essential requirement for a safe ride across country and for our ultimate success. These adjustments of pace have to be trained and practised so that they are executed without the horse resisting and wasting energy and concentration in ‘fighting’ with the rider; we need the focus to be in the job in hand which is to efficiently cover the ground and to accurately judge and negotiate the jumps presented.
In training for cross country riding although ultimately we need to mostly approach fences with an appropriate, for the type of obstacle, canter, we would be well advised to allow the young or green horse to approach unfamiliar jumps from trot or even sometime simply walk up to them first. The feeling we want to achieve is that as we present the element to be jumped the horse ‘asks’ to take it on and desires to go to canter. When we get the result that in a trot approach, the horse happily skips into canter a couple of strides before the jump, we then know he is confident to go forward to the jump, as opposed to approaching too fast and subsequently ‘backing off’ at the last moment which makes for an awkward effort at best. As long as we are reasonable with the size of the jumps we choose for the stage of training, a good tip to remember is that if the horse is willing to approach and investigate a jump without being too suspicious of it, the chances are he will be willing to jump it.
Keep having fun and be safe!
