>>Do
any of you know any good books, websites, or other sources of information on
design & building of various obstacles that might help train/proof a horse
for the various things we run into along endurance or CTR courses, or
>>just a Saturday in the park.
I don’t think that it’s
necessary to teach your horse over every type of obstacle you’re going to
encounter.You need to teach him basic
obedience, trust and respect and then it shouldn’t matter when you
encounter something new : his basic training will step
in and you should find that he will do whatever he is asked to do.
So you start off by teaching him to move
forward off the leg, to back up, to turn on the quarters and on the fore, and
to leg yield left and right and shoulder-in and quarters-in left and right.
It’s impossible to train over every
conceivable obstacle, but if you “categorise”
the types of obstacles you’ll encounter, you should have covered your
bases.I haven’t done CTR, but I
do event and have done some rudimentary (my word of the month
: Kat will understand why) showing.What your horse is probably going to be expected to do is to cope with :
-stepping up onto an obstacle;
-stepping down off of an obstacle;
-stepping over dark obstacles which mimic holes in the ground (or,
in my case, jumping over actual holes in the ground)
-walking over raised obstacles (or jumping over them)
-walking through narrow gaps
-picking his way over a “course” of raised / uneven
obstacles
-walking under low objects
-dealing with flapping / noisy distractions;
-walking past “lurking”
objects.FWIW, I’ve always found
that horses tend to look at these the most. I think they mimic predators lying in the grass.My horses have always coped better with
people carrying large black bin bags, or bags on wheelbarrows, than they have
with bags just “lying” in the ground.They also will jump over them without batting
an eyelid, but when they just LURK there, they are definitely suspicious.
Once you’ve “classified’
what you’re going to have to deal with, then try
to find one or two “obstacles” in each class and build them.But also remember that the setting is important.When I first start training my horses, I try
to take them out to as many places as possible so that they not only face the “spooky”
at home, they also face it in a different
setting.
VERY IMPORTANT AND OFTEN FORGOTTEN : ride them over these obstacles at different times
of the day : light and shadow make things look different.
You could try some of the showing books /
websites, under the “handy horse” or “working riding”
tests.
