fussy towards end of lesson...

[dappledgrey]

:confused: I've been riding my 15h Quarter Horse, Cheif in jumping lessons... he's a fantastic horse and a great, calm jumper, but towards the end of lessons... He begins to speed up, get nervous and jittery... any tips?

[BNaturally]

He may want more and is just bored with jumping now.
High level horses need to do other disciplines or have that one they love to do.
You must find that one thing your horse wants and loves and mix it up with his jumping work.
Hacking out and crossing water, climbing hills and allowing the horse to look at his environment from the top.
This is a refreshing thing to do with the right well train horse that has been thru desensitizion to everthing and you have establish proper leadership to do this in a safe manner everytime.

Look for things your horse may want and love to do.
Be safe, patient, fair, clear, consistant with your requests,leadership.

[dilaika]

I agree with the earlier post, you might want to try switching things up. The horse I ride gets bored easily and when he gets bored he gets to be a major pain...so what my instructer and I do is make sure to switch things up. We jump things from different directions and in different orders so that he can't anticipate and get bored. Just putting jumps up doesn't count. For example, if we have a line of two jumps w/ says 5 or 6 strides, one time I'll do both, then the next time I'll do one, halt, and do the other. Another time I'll be on the rail, swing in, and just do the second jump. I might do a figure eight, doing one jump go around the end and cut through the middle, do the other jump, and so on.

If we keep him engaged, he acts 100% better.

I would also make sure that its not a pain thing - some horses get antsy when they tired or when something (such as their back) start hurting. I don't know his medical history...but you could try adding an orthopedic pad, wraps/boots, etc (they can't hurt...if it is a soreness/stiffness issue it may help)