Eventing training without cross country?

[Fruehling]

So, I’ve always wanted to event, but am very limited to it because of where I live. As far as I know, there isn’t any more than a few very small, at home style cross country “courses” for at least 4 hours, with no real course/facility for over 10 hours. There used to be a decent one which I rode at a few times when I was in pony clubs (5+ years ago with different horses), but has since not been maintained and is unsafe to use. Going anywhere to event or even just to school wasn’t an option previously simply in terms of means and finance.

Now however I’m finally in a place where I have a horse who’s ready, and I am ready to travel somewhere to try my first actual event. My question is, how do I prepare for it? With access to nothing other than some logs and hay bales in a small field (other than regular poles and standards), how do I school cross country? We ride in the field at home (that she lives in), go on trails, have gone to regular horse shows away from home, can jump and dressage very confidently, but I’m not sure where to go from here. Can I prepare enough for the cross country faze without actually getting her out on a real course first? What can I do from home to give us our best chance?

[juliaeharper]

Would you be able to build some of your own jumps? At my barn we use things like barrels, home made brush boxes, coops, ramps, ditches, log piles, tire jumps, etc. Then you could add those to your field so she’s seeing jumps that would be more similar to those at an event, not just regular standards and poles. Also if you made your own jumps you could make them to be any size you want!

[Kairoshorses]

If you horse has never done XC, not sure it’s a good idea to go w/o prepping over XC. I live in Lubbock, TX, and until recently, the closest XC course was 6 hours away (now there’s one 4.5 hours away–woo, hoo!). I went to several schoolings and clinics and even some training horse trials before we did our first event.

That said, if you have the land, you can create a lot of similar jumps to those you’ll find at BN/N (again, I did this). Once you’ve done some real stuff, it’s great to keep you in shape.

Others might disagree, but this has been my hard reality.

[Highflyer]

If you’re going to an actual recognized event and doing BN, I would try to introduce your horse to small ditches, banks, and water, even if it means building them yourself/ hauling to somewhere with a stream crossing etc. You can also look on the event’s website and mycoursewalks.com to see if you can find pictures of your course, which might help. If you’re hauling 10 hours to the event, can you go a couple of days early and find somewhere local to school the day before?

It also really depends on your personality-- if you go to the event unprepared and it doesn’t go well, will you be able to laugh it off or will you be really upset? If you are able to go and take it one fence at a time and retire if it is too much mentally for your horse (and not regret it for weeks) then I don’t think it’s the end of the world. After all, your horse doesn’t know the difference between a competition and a schooling unless you treat it differently.

[pony_grandma]

Gymnastics is all about going forward off the leg and the horse learning to balance and stride. At the lower levels set up a log pile, hammer up a small coop, shove some brush in some pallets, use some water puddles and you’re good to go. Riding out is so important. Practice going forward off the leg in the field then sit up and use your body to rebalance the horse and regulate the speed. Use circling to begin this process then practice it on the straight.

I didn’t have any courses nor had even seen an event first hand before I started eventing. And that was back before all these lower divisions. If you can jump some logs on a trail you can event. Keep a positive attitude.

[Fruehling]

I don’t think my first event would be (or should be) a recognized one. Ideally I would like to go somewhere a week or so ahead of time, settle in, and school a few days before the event, so it’s not new place, new horses, new jumps all at once. And hopefully have a friend or a coach to at the very least help point me in the direction I need to go. Last year we were showing 2’9 and 3’0 at home with ease, but I don’t mind doing one of the even lower unrecognized levels (starter I think?) just for a positive first experience. More for her than me. If we make it through all 3 fazes in my first event, I will be pleased! I don’t have something to prove, I just want to do it!

Making my own jumps is a tricky thing. Where I board there are two fields: one that is ~20 acres open pasture with hills and flat bits that would be ideal for a smallish course (where my horse lives in the summer). The other is about 60 acres but is about half treed, has a stream at the bottom of a steepish valley (can ride up and down it, but only at a slow walk), not a lot of flat areas, with inconsistent ground and has bears. The barn owner is ok with me riding in the field when it isn’t wet so I don’t rip it up, but her husband really doesn’t like anyone riding in the field, much less putting jumps in it! It’s a bit of a tough spot, since I’m not super keen on having to worry about bears popping up while schooling. The only time I’ve ever ridden in that field is with a group of people so they stay away, but rustling up a group is pretty tough where I am. Could probably put up jumps in the big field and it would be ok. But like I said, not super easy or ideal place to school with confidence.

In terms of jumping “stuff” other than standards and poles, I’m pretty confident with her. She is bold and rarely ever even feels like she’s going to stop/run out. Hasn’t since we first started jumping. We have these little barns (jump fill) that are about 2’ by 2’ that she will jump straight if there are two poles or standards (the single post ones, not the wings). Will jump a roll top thats 5’ wide with no wings, even on a bend. Jumps “scary” fill in hunters and jumpers with maybe just a quick look down if it’s really decorated. So I will definitely keep it way below the level we’re jumping as I want it to be as simple as possible for her to start. She’s very honest and I don’t want to ruin that.

Thank you for all the encouraging advice!!

[NeverTime]

I started eventing in a similar situation. Instead of looking for events to go to when my horse was very green, I looked for clinics to attend. Clinics offer multiple opportunities for lessons and XC schooling, so instead of getting 5 minutes and one chance to jump each fence, I could get multiple chances, as well as an opportunity to introduce him to things like ditches and up/down banks gradually and properly. Even if (or especially if) it’s a 10-hour haul to a real XC facility, look for a clinic coming to that facility rather than a show there so you can get more bang for your buck. I was actually fortunate early on to find several clinics that culminated in schooling horse trials, so I ultimately had the chance to train and compete in one trip.
also early on, I tried to schedule extra days for my trips, just like you are considering, but I scheduled them so I could stay a day or so afterward and school the XC course after the competition. (If the venue is just holding an event, rather than a clinic, it’s unlikely they’ll let you school the course before the show, though it certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask if it’s something casual and unrecognized.) I had fairly good luck explaining my situation and remote location to organizers, providing my own ground person (aka, some poor unsuspecting boyfriend), signing a release and being allowed to go back out and school afte the event.

good luck to you!

[Doctracy]

Do you live anywhere near a hunt you can join? I can’t think of many places in the US that don’t have a hunt somewhere within 8-10 hours. At least that would get you galloping over natural obstacles,even if it’s a hunt that doesn’t have jumps,which is common out west. Even hunting in the desert near Phoenix there were plenty of tricky ditches and other natural obstacles.

[bornfreenowexpensive]

It’s really teaching them to be comfortable jumping up and down hill, ditches, water and banks. Ditches you can mimic fairly easy…but the rest is a bit harder. The bigger issue is you are green on green. An experienced xc rider could take a bold green horse at a low level and teach them xc on course…that will be more challenging when the rider is rusty and/or green too!

If you can school ahead…you should be fine. Then given you situation, I’d just really try and introduce jumping little things up and down hill…and introduce a ditch concept in the ring.

[fordtraktor]

Go trail riding. Then jump whatever you find – fallen trees, ditches, go through water. Most farms will have a culvert somewhere you can turn into a ditch and jump and there are bound to be ditches around on trails.

if your horse can do all this, then a Starter or BN groomed XC course will be nothing. My old jumper was used to doing this kind of stuff at home. The first time I took him XC he jumped around Prelim and Intermediate jumps. I didn’t know any better and he didn’t think twice because he’d seen far worse “in the rough”. But you have to actually find things like steep banks to hop off of, flowing creeks to trot through, fallen trees to jump, etc. Just a plain walking trail ride on a groomed trail is not going to get the job done.

But a horse trained to stay straight and go forward when you say forward is going to jump around BN.

[Hunterkid]

What area are you in ?

[jn4jenny]

So. This isn’t a full answer, and schooling real-life XC is super important. But you asked how you can give yourself the best chance from home, before you move onto real-life XC schooling. So let’s talk about that.

Jimmy Wofford says that all XC fences take 5 fundamental shapes. You can school these shapes with showjumping poles and standards. Behold the shapes, with corresponding XC fences:

Vertical - post-and-rail fences, wall fences, gates, brush boxes, coops and pheasant feeders with steep sides, “up” banks, skinny or keyhole fences

Oxer - hay bales, tables, corner jumps

Ascending Oxer - palisades, chairs or benches, arrowheads/chevrons, ski jumps, ascending spread fences, fan jump

Hogsback - trakehners, rolltops, tiger traps/triangle fences, coops and pheasant feeders with long slopey sides, and anything that looks like a little house with a roof on it

Obstacles without height - ditches and water

Some fences are combos of these five shapes, like the Weldon’s Wall. But even combo fences break down to a fundamental shape. A Weldon’s Wall is technically a ditch + a vertical, but for schooling purposes, its fundamental shape is ascending oxer.

So if you want to improve your odds of XC success, school all five shapes at home. If possible, take your show jumps outside and school these shapes in the open. For extra points, school them in the open, at the appropriate canter speed for your target level, and string two or three of them together. For extra extra points, get someone to give you a course map for the last event(s) at your local course, and string those specific combos of fences together.

There’s lots of bending lines on XC courses, either intentional because that’s how the course rides, or unintentional because you gave the horse a crappy approach. :lol: Anyway, pre-save your bacon by teaching your horse to navigate bending lines and jump a fence at an angle. Very easy to school in the arena or open field. Heck, you can school this with poles on the ground.

Make sure your horse is sufficiently fit and rate-able at the canter. If you don’t have space to properly school a canter or hand gallop, find some. It may be 4+ hours to your nearest XC course, but there’s got to be an open grassy field closer than 4 hours away.

Water: Puddles are your friend. If you have a BO with a good sense of humor, ask if you can make a puddle somewhere. Butter them up by offering to empty all the barn’s dirty buckets into said puddle. Shallow creeks and lakes are even better. Ask the local trail riders or foxhunters where you might find a creek, lake, or a navigable trail with some puddles. For extra points, bribe them with food, gas money, etc. to take you out there with a confident lead horse.

Ditches: If your BO will permit it, dig a small ditch on the property. If they won’t allow it, fake a ditch with two poles + some black mulch poured in between. In the arena, you can fake a ditch with two poles + a black tarp or trash bag in between. And if you’re just starting to introduce ditches, you don’t really need the tarp or mulch. Just use two ground poles + a third pole laid diagonally across it. Start narrow and widen as the horse grows more confident.

Banks: Find any kind of hillside, no matter how slight. Set up a crossrail or vertical fence on this hill. Voila, you’ve just built yourself a “bank.” It’s an up bank when you’re jumping up the hill and a down bank when you’re jumping down the hill.

Random other tips:

'Tis the season for old Xmas trees. Park them under a vertical and voila, you’ve got yourself a brush fence.

Drape random (safe) stuff over your fences and/or the standards. Jackets, saddle pads, blankets, garlands, towels, tarps.

Teach your horse to jump in and out of light/dark spaces. For example, set up a jump at the arena door, and jump in/out of the arena. Got that tip here on COTH Forums, years ago! So thanks to whomever shared that one.

Make sure you do bounces in your grid work. Bounces are fairly common on XC courses, and they encourage your horse to be catty/use its fifth leg.

[kashmere]

There is some wonderful advice on this thread! Pony Grandma and jn4jenny I think really nailed it.

I’m lucky in that I live in a very very small province near the centre of it, so while there aren’t a ton of options for XC courses full stop, they are all relatively close. That being said, I have always always mostly schooled at home. Trails and a field are your friend.

Riding out on trails or hacking around whatever adjacent roads and properties you have safe access to is invaluable. It lets you know how your horse reacts to novel sights and sounds which is important XC. It also allows him to become confident over varied terrain and not have meltdowns over going from road to dirt to grass to trail to water (or, in the case of one of my rides last week, trail to full on bog! whoops!). Trails and hacking out are also a wonderful way to build fitness for both you and your horse. 2 or 3 hours of ring work is a lot to ask - mentally and physically of a horse (and rider! It’s boring!) but a 2-3 hour trail ride is doable if the horse has a good baseline of fitness.

In terms of the jumps and the riding in a field, jn4jenny really nailed it. Go do all of those things! I like to look at XC as learning to work with whatever comes up, however it comes up. A plan is important, but you and your horse both need to learn a greater degree of trust in one another, because there’s a greater degree of variance when riding out and jumping over terrain.

Good luck!

[MontysGal]

[QUOTE=jn4jenny;8480497]
Bounces are fairly common on XC courses, and they encourage your horse to be catty/use its fifth leg.[/QUOTE]

I am reading this with so much interest, but I am SO curious - what is the horse’s 5th leg?! I’ve heard of a human’s 3rd leg, but I am thinking it’s somewhat less… umm… naughty?

[jn4jenny]

[QUOTE=MontysGal;8480760]
I am reading this with so much interest, but I am SO curious - what is the horse’s 5th leg?! I’ve heard of a human’s 3rd leg, but I am thinking it’s somewhat less… umm… naughty?[/QUOTE]

It’s an idiom for “a horse’s ability to avoid falling, even if he slips or trips or experiences extreme pilot error.” Like he’s landing on an invisible fifth leg. Exhibit A:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClsQB3_q5hY

[pony_grandma]

let me add: I think 2 of the biggest problems for beginners (green riders, green/ young horses) is learning to focus and stringing the fences together. Don’t get too busy with it out on a xc course, I’ve seen people overthink it, or more like it, not think it! keep it simple.

Here at home schooling a young horse we moved our jump standards and set cross poles out in a field. Go out there and use a strong road trot and just keep going from one to the next one. Space them out and set some bending lines also. Learn to ride with a plan. Set some lawn chairs next to them, maybe open an umbrella and set in the seat or on the ground next to the chair (or a friend with a clipboard ). You will need ‘your’ focus to ride xc to have the horse to focus with you.

I’ve told this story here before, best example I’ve seen was an experienced rider riding a young horse at starter. She came thru at a brisk road trot and strung those fences together. She stayed centered and leg on in the middle of that horse. The horse was a very athletic type they could have started at a higher level but that horse got that idea that day. And the horse was focused. I’ve seen way too many inexperienced riders come out cantering an unconfident canter that spurts, jump one fence then you see the omg where am I going look on their face. or you see that horse coming in not organized and then they drop a shoulder the rider gets pitched forward and we’re picking up the rider.

All of this gets practiced at home.

[Cameraine]

I had a similar situation where it was extremely hard for me to get my young horse out before a Starter event that I knew would have baby ditches and water, thankfully no real banks. I manufactured a ditch in my jumping area by putting two landscaping timbers about six to 12 inches a part, parallel to each other with blue painted wood panels between them to simulate a ditch. For the water, thankfully it had rained a lot and I found a really big mud puddle and just trotted through it several times to make sure my gelding wouldn’t bulk at getting his feet wet.

But I totally agree with the clinic suggestion. It gives you training in a safe, supervised environment that will lend you and your horse confidence to school on your when the opportunity presents itself. Or reach out to eventing coaches in the areas that have facilities and find out if they have xc schooling days that you could join and possible stable to take some lessons near the schooling day date.

[Fruehling]

I am actually signed up already for an eventing clinic in June (at the 4 hour away place) with Dale Irwin and I’m super excited! Will be doing some serious training earlier this spring so that hopefully we get to try a little more than just super basic stuff.

Good idea with the tarp for a ditch! We have a water jump (one of those large blue ones) at our fair grounds that we’ve walked over/jumped as well as a piece of plywood (we used when schooling trail lol) without issues, but I’ll make up a few more “varieties” of ditches, and maybe find somewhere where we can make an actual shallow ditch. As for banks, there is one (sort of) at our fair grounds too. It’s more of a table made of 4 large logs about 2’ high with dirt in the middle. Have trotted up and down that before. Footing isn’t great there though so I’m a little leery about making a combination with another jump to it, but she’s fine with the step up and down at a trot/slow canter.

I’m in northwest BC (Canada). There are no horse trials, hunts, or other gallivanting through the fields groups near here. The closest thing to that is the backcountry horseman group which I’m joining this year as we desperately need to do more trails than the ones close to home she’s used to. Will be great for fitness too.

Water: The arena where we board gets saturated pretty easily when it rains (which is does a lot), and there is also a big puddle over a drain in the barn yard when there’s too much rain, and a creek on the property. The creek isn’t good for going through faster than a walk (slippery rocks and steep banks) but we will do that more this year so she can do some “scary” water. But we still do all our regular work in the arena when when corner gets flooded (including jumping in and out of it). We’ve walked through the puddle in the barn yard (we call it the foot washing station ). Probably could trot through it too, a little too hard of ground to canter through I think.
Hogsback/Oxers: We have a couple of “barns” for jump fill, planks, barrels, rolls tops, brush boxes, and flowery fill that we jump regularly. Before shows we often school “scary” stuff like super packing the jumps with branches, flowers, saddle pads, etc. So will keep doing that!
Combos: She’s a very honest horse in the way that if I am decisive about the jump and set her up to it properly she will be 100% with me and jump it as well as I put her to it. The trickiest thing we’ve probably done is a straight 2 stride line between two jumps that were on a 90 degree angle to each other. Like this kind of:
-----/-- but steeper angle. Done it like this too: --------
Bending lines are fine too. Haven’t jumped her over many triple bars or corners so will definitely do that!

Thank you so much for such great advice! I’m getting so excited for spring when I can start!

[Hunterkid]

I’m glad you’re going to a clinic ! I would ask everyone there where they go for schooling. There may be somewhere you don’t know about !

[ksbadger]

By Mid-West standards, four hours is pretty close - in fact from my experience in driving around Washington state & southern BC, that’s close by Pacific North West standards as well. You must have contacted Eventing Canada or whoever is organizing your clinic, do they have any knowledge of suitable training locations? You don’t necessarily need a full length competition-ready cross-country to work up.
A more general comment to anyone asking for advice, PLEASE PUT YOUR GENERAL LOCATION IN YOUR HEADER. It can make getting you the information you want so much easier.