Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

From: "ll cole" <bluemoonfarm90@xxxxxxxxxxx>

> Left to their own devices and choosing, horses are
> pretty much generally satisfied standing in their pasture
> with plenty to eat and drink. I've had some escape their
> paddock here at home, but they never went to the arena
> and started doing cavaletti, running the barrel pattern or
> going over the jumps.
I have a friend who has a horse that if you turn him out in an areana
with jumps in it will quite eagerly run around an jump the jumps totally
at liberty.  He will seek them out so he can go over them even though
there is plenty of room to go around.  He thinks that jumping is about
as fun of an activity as there is.

Certainly, my own horses, in their own paddock at home (and even when
they were turned out on a 100 acre pasture) for play (I am told by the
person who owns the property and lives there that it is a fairly regular
mid-morning activity) get to running around together and will jump
anything that happens to be in their way which includes both the natrual
obstacles such as piles of rocks, the ruts, and the bushes as well as
the "man made" obstacles such as the feed and water troughs.

So yes, even at liberty (none of my horses are wild so I can't comment
on what wild horses may or may not do), horses are fairly eager
jumpers...at least some of them are (and those that aren't are rarely,
if ever, used for competitive jumping).  Personally, I don't have a
single horse that is content to stand around and graze all the time,
even though they do have that option.

However, that is neither here nor there with respect to my original
post.  Truman said "the horse has no say."  And, in this, he is totally
wrong.  When it comes to jumping, even in the unnatural environment of
the man-made jump course when under saddle, the horse has almost all the
"say."  And a very common situation where RIDERS get injured is when the
horse is asked to jump the obstacle and the horse says, "Nope, not doin'
it."

It is because the horse has almost all the say (and pretty much won't
even try unless it thinks it can jump successfully) that riders have to
learn to jump effectively and ask the horse properly.

kat
Orange County, Calif.



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