Seeing some Eventing happening again, reminds me of the training journey I had to take with one of my horses to be able to have him ready and willing to do water jumps. He used to avoid stepping in shallow puddles where he couldn’t see the bottom, so there was quite a bit of work neccessary to have him confident enough to overcome bodies of water much bigger than a small puddle.
I started by trying to take him to the river, with my Mum and my other horse. Mum would lead my other horse across the running river at the shallow crossing ahead of us, and I would try get him to follow. Turns out that water where he could see the bottom like this was not the issue, because soon he was standing in the middle of the river, splashing water at us with his front hoof. He worked out the harder he hit the water the more wet we would get!
The next training session, was to get him to a dam with some gumboots and a lunge lead. We knew he could go through a larger body of water than a puddle, but now we needed him to go through the dam like he had the river. This was a little more challenging because he could not see the bottom of the dam. So I walked through the dam on the path that we would take first to make sure it was safe. Then I tried to get my horse to walk with me the same path I had just walked. Gradually I would get him to take a step into the dam, which I would then release the pressure and give him a pat, and let him have some time to take it in. I would then ask for another step and repeat the process until the dam had been crossed. A few times we had to start from the beginning because he would back out or not want to go any further, but we persisted until we had crossed the dam once, and then repeated it both ways a couple times to show him there was nothing to be afraid of.
After having the breakthrough on foot through the dam, it was then time to take him out on a cross country course purely for training purposes. We jumped a few other jumps first to get us both confident that we could successfully complete some obstacles, and then we approached the water jump. I dismounted, and walked him through on foot first, and then got on and rode him through the water a few times. I then added a small jump into the water a couples times, and continued the course home to end again on a positive note.
From there we got to compete in our first One Day Event, and go on to compete in many more Eventing competitions, knowing that the water jump wasn’t going to be a problem. The biggest example of this was jumping a large rolltop jump into water and then jumping another large jump out of the water after a few years eventing together! I think one of the most important things to know when training horses, is not to expect them to go anywhere or do anything that you won’t do or go yourself. The fact I was willing to walk with my horse through each step of the process, release pressure when he had made progress, give positive reinforcement, and give him the time to make the calls that the water was ok; really helped to give our bond a solid foundation.
Feature Image courtesy of Pinterest.
-Skye Pickering Dip. Horse Business Management.