Awww...poor Abby.  I swear Fits hurts himself on purpose when he thinks he' gonna have to work.    No ill effects from him bumping his knee on the cavaletti when he ran over it, much to his dislike I'm sure.

Abby was freaked out about one ground pole much less a trot grid and you can forget about jumping...Now she jumps and does actual grids and will walk over a pole on the ground...unstead of the four foot leap over the one ground pole she used to do...like everything takes time and confidence...Go figure she just skinned herself on her stall so she is getting atleast two weeks off I'm sure we will get to start all over on things.

 

-ANG

Shanon Brandt <shananbrandt@sympatico.ca> wrote:

When my boy came off the track he was terrified of the jump standards, and poles.  I started him out by placing a single pole out, but lots of them, all over the arena with no pattern to them, and started by walking him over them.  Once he realized they don't move or bite and would walk over them I moved onto trotting over them and eventually increased the # of them and then just had them lined up off the track of the arena and he gradually got better and better at them.

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Rhonda Medsker

To: retraintbs@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 3:01 PM

Subject: [retraintbs] Trot poles

Anybody ever had a horse that initially hated trot poles/jumping but ended up a hunter or event horse?

 

Fits was hating the trot poles when I put them down last week as he would do ANYTHING to avoid them.  Last night I had him and his buddy Aero free lunging/playing in the indoor and put 1 trot pole on each side of the arena.  He got to the point running around that he would jump them. I think he only actually trotted over them twice.  The rest of the time he was cantering and did this pretty little hop over them as if to say "Oh, this is all you wanted?".  It was really quite a transformation to watch him go from avoiding them at the beginning to looking for them.  Then I set up a high cavaletti (probably 1 1/2 ft. high) .  Aero was in front of Fits, Areo jumped it and Fits ran over it knocking it over.  You should have seen the look on his face, he was so bent out of shape over it...almost embarrassed. So I had them reverse and put the white trot pole in front of the cavaletti and Fits jumped it very nicely.  So, we ended the evening there.  Both horses were breathing hard and starting to sweat.  Point to all this is that Fits seemed to enjoy jumping the trot poles.  Of course, I can't wait to get to the barn to see if his knee is swollen from hitting the cavaletti when he ran over it. 

 

Never a dull moment around my guy and I'm always learning something from him but I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

Rhonda

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