teaching a horse to pick up over fences - help please!

[beanz's mum]

ginger has been raced over hurdles, and now when we jump she often speeds up and flatens over the jump. She can clear up to 3ft but anyhigher she knocks it down. if i presented her to a 6ft fence she will try and jump it (although i never would) so she has not confidence issues in that area (she never refuses etc) but she just doesnt pick up her legs

so help!!!!

im beginning to do gridwork, bounces, doubles trotting + cantering over poles etc but is there anything else that will help her pick + tuck up her legs?

thanks

:)

[vimto92]

Do what you're doing and focus on collecting her stride too.

[Bobbin]

Do what you're doing and focus on collecting her stride too.

Thats what I was going to say, less speed and more collection. Concentrate on getting her right over smaller jumps before you put her over bigger ones. It's not always about the height of the jump, it's about about the quality;)

[kismet]

Try a trakhener (spelling?) fence made out of poles.

The first pole on the floor about a foot out acting as a ground line, a little upright fence in the center, nothing big, and a pole on the other side at a similar distance away. That should help to make the horse make an outline over the fence and give a curve to the jump. Also, don't go too big. Sounds like she needs to be taught from the beginning again rather than jumping big fences.

[beanz's mum]

yeh thanx for the help, im going to work on canter and do some poles and lungeing over jumps etc in the next few weeks, see how it goes.

she is a really nice jumper but one above 1m she goes into race mode :rolleyes: and is abit flat, well alot flat.

looks like we have a long way to go yet ... well longer than i thought anyway

but yeh thanks for the advise !

[maybelline]

my trainer takes steeplechasers and turns then into eventers and she deals with this ALOT. try putting about 4 or 5 poles on the ground and trot over them making sure her pace stays normal. them space them out a bit more and canter over them, again making sure she doesn't speed up. try using your entire body to say "wait" then put a small crossrail in front of the poles and trot the whole thing concentrating on a steady pace, then work up to a canter and a larger jump, then begin to take poles away. when she starts speeding up again, add a pole and go back to trot. this seems to work for my trainer very well i know its alot of work. it helps to have an extra person to move poles for you. good luck!!!

[Sticky's GF]

I've been doing lots of gridwork with mine - he tended to launch himself at his fences, and therefore lose some roundnes over them.

We were doing grids of pole, fence, 1 x stride over a pole, fence, 1 x stride over a pole, another fence. It took a while for him to get the idea, he kept landing on the poles, or using them as placing poles and just taking off and bouncing them! But then he figured it was much easier for him if he looked at where he was going to land as he was taking off, i.e. in front of the pole, and this made him more economical and more rounded.

The jumps started small but over the weeks we increased to about 3ft at last lesson. Will try and attach pic of grid so you know what I mean :) OK found a pic, horse lands just in front of pink pole when jumping 2nd to last fence, takes 1 x stride over pole which creates roundness to the canter then pops the last. There were placing poles all along the grid but you cant see them in the photo.

[Iron Maiden]

My mare would often leave a foot behind, I've been doing lots of grids & focussing on getting her more uphill into her jumps which has helped a lot. Another thing that I think has really helped is practising over narrow crosspoles built high at the sides, she has realised that if she tucks her feet away she doesn't need to jump as high so she's learning how to tidy her legs away now :)