Think you are saying the Ammy horse needs to be able to take a joke 
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And for the record I donât necessarily approve of a lot of the aforementioned shenanigans I see going on in the meter division. I just think itâs remarkable that there are so many nice horses that can be consistently excellent with sketchy riding at that height.
I donât want my riders to do that stuff obviously, but when I see horses that can do that yes I do admire them. It makes me think that horse is talented, has a nice personality, confident, is probably very sound, healthy, and is in a good training program so itâs admirable. Or⊠itâs x number of those rounds away from becoming a horse with a stop. You can never really know for sure unless you ask other trainers and even then who knows if theyâll be honest. Thatâs why itâs an interesting subject to me.
Yeah in a perfect world everyone always gets the right strides and distances but lol this sport is hard.
I think a horse should stop in some situations (self preservation). I had my heart horse from 4-8 (when he very sadly had to be euthanized). He stopped twice with me: once when I tried to slice a jump so extreme he was confused and once when I got nervous, forgot to participate in any distance-related decision and pulled. Other than that he would take off from anywhere and nothing scared him and never held a grudge for any of my ammy mistakes. He was the best.
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I think a horse showing at a higher level is much less likely to forgive a bad distance at 2â than a horse that chips at 2â all day long as part of its job. They generally can handle bad distances, but only if the ride doesnât change too far from the relative competence they are used to: a timely recognition that things are less than ideal and a calm and strong response. A rider that isnât experienced enough to recognize in time that the distance is bad, or one that freezes and abandons them, needs a real packer in the more talented horse range if they want to jump higher, which is rarer than the real packer in the average horse range. The height of the particular jump itself doesnât really matter (if you arenât talking about the other extreme, a horse at the end of its scope limit), itâs the ride they are accustomed to.
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LOL, our BOâs super reliable fox hunt horse is also a star school horse. A kid was learning how to canter on her, and got a bit unbalanced, hands got to waving a little. She inadvertently pulled the inside rein, and the mare followed the hand to the inside track and very slowly and smoothly jumped a 3â3" oxer. Backwards. Kid got popped off and landed on her feet. We all kind of held out breath, then she exclaimed âHOLY COW!! THAT WAS FUN!â And now we have a new horse addict on our hands
A good fox hunter knows you donât stop, no matter what! You jump around hounds or mud or dead bodies, but you damn well better jump
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I once went down to Pennsylvania to try a horse that was hunting first flight with Cheshire. You just had to think about jumping a fence and that horse found his way to a good spot. Within the half hour the trainer had me jumping 4â and the horse was so clever and athletic I could see that he would be a huge confidence builder.
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Yeah I guess I agree with this in general , but I also sort of feel like the horse that is used to chipping all the time at lower heights has more justification for being tired of that lol and the horse that jumps the 1.30 should have an easy time taking a little chip over a small jump. But yeah I guess youâre right.
lol this horse in that situation was so quiet and nice I really kind of suspect they were trying to sell it to me for a kid because maybe it didnât want to jump that high. But who knows.
I have a really awesome old pony who has done that to so many of my kids
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