I am looking for ideas to set up of scary and spooky jumps I can set up at home to work on my OTTBs nervousness over anything not basic poles. Can be showjumps or XC jumps just need ideas. TIA
Craft stores/dollar stores/home goods stores are a great place for silk flowers and garlands/wreaths and other seasonal decorations. Sometimes you can get them pretty cheap if they are the wrong season or just during sales events. It’s a great way to dress up fences and doesn’t dictate the height of the jumps either. You can make flower boxes to stick silk flowers in pretty easily.
This page shows some nice examples of things you can do with flowers and a bit of paint on a pretty low budget. http://homemadehorsejumps.weebly.com/fillers.html
Tarps work well for simulating liverpools/water trays. You can go with blue or black (which can simulate a ditch).
Plastic cones (check out sports sections), lawn ornaments (think: garden gnomes, flamingos etc) can dress up the wings/standards of your jumps (or, perhaps as fillers too, depending on size).
Drag brush in from your burn pile or the woods and use that as fillers. Ribbon streamers. Pool noodles. Other pool toys (inflatables like crocodiles, sharks, etc can be spooky but safe). Toss your jacket or a rug/blanket over a fence. Watermelons. Brooms. Tires. Plastic rain barrels. Kayaks/canoes.
Pinterest is a great resource for DIY jump ideas.
Just make sure nothing has sharp edges or the potential to catch a horse up/tip over and cause a fall.
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Please make sure when you are doing this that you don’t over face your horse. Make the jumps gradually more and more colorful or interesting. You can even bring stuff into the barn to get your horse used to “scary” stuff there. Just don’t suddenly brighten up your jumps and really scare your horse.
He has been slowly introduced to my regular fillers but it’s time to step it up and I can’t think of any 
Plastic flowers in tubs on each side. Bright, seasonal things you hang up on the standards like a pumpkin or scarecrow fall poster or Valentines Day heart, Aussie flags on your national holiday similar to our 4th of July. Any kind of plastic you can lay on the ground under a spread jump to mimic a Liverpool.
Any foliage resulting from tree trimming or weeding can be piled in front it a jump or just piled with no standards, Discarded Christmas trees work great for that.
And move things frequently, same jump in same place just creates complacency, teaches nothing. Coat of light colored paint can really brighten any tired jump up too. Don’t gave to spend much, just get creative and keep mixing it up.
strangely enough one of the spookiest jumps I have had was a box with dark green carpet - I think they had a hard time distinguishing it’s dimensions.
Yeah…one barn I was in had a fake stone wall. Horses and riders didn’t even look at it any more Until they painted it solid black. Now that was a real circus, most refused to even go by it a few wouldn’t go into the ring with it. Sure shows up the holes in what you thought was your well thought out training program.
You can also hang things on the arena fence and move them every few days. Develops steering, lateral control and overall obedience and, if you do this and move them around regularly, they’ll never spook at an advertising banner draped over anything at a show.
hay bales…then cover the hay bales with a tarp or other colored blankets (make sure they’re secure and wrapped all the way around). If you’re in a place that’s dusty and try and keep them wiped/hosed down so they stay bright. fresh coats of paint helps–sometimes local paint stores have “reject buckets” of different colors–good place to pick up paint cheaply! Move the filler around frequently and move the jumps around as often as you have time for.
Get some plywood that you can paint and use between standards below regular rails.
Then be as creative as needed when you paint!
We made them reversible and we painted":
- red brick wall
- stone wall
- sunburst
- stop sign
- chevrons or festoons cut outs
- solid colors.
Also, decorate jumps with old tires, cones, swim “noodles” etc.
Barrels ( you can get them for free at your town dump etc)
A dead Xmas tree can be a nice jump, too.
A tarp or bright straw to mimic a ditch or a liverpool jump.
And yes, move the jumps around. A lot. Gotta keep that Ottb brain busy 
Also, beware of hay bales…the first time I trotted my young Ottb to a hay bale jump, she stopped dead and started eating…
If you really want to fry his brains, get some pinwheels and put them in a flower box. If he can handle those, he’ll be able to handle anything!
On a more helpful note, I find lots of horses seem to have a problem with yellow, so a yellow fence is a good idea. Also, filler in the shape of waves or anything irregular. For filler, those big colorful noodles that kids play with are great. Shiny paper plates or even just tie pieces of ribbon to fences so there’s a little something moving around.
On a side note, when you jump these, don’t forget to keep you leg on.
Scariest jumps I have built were made of cardboard boxes, wrapped with brightly coloured wrapping paper. Then we stack them in different configurations. One on the ground, with one tipped so it is half on the ground and half resting on the first box was the most exciting. The combo of the colour, and the sound they make when the sand hits them, makes them quite exciting.
The other thing I found to make an interesting jump, was a bunch of logs, which I stacked into a pile at either end, then two rails on the logs (horizontally), then plastic board resting horizontally on the rails, then more logs and more poles. This is exciting because the horse can’t see the coloured board until you are quite close.
I like to use inflatable pool toys. Hang life saver rings from jump poles with baling twine, they swing and swish lightly in the wind. Use single-size blow-up rafts as liverpools, or use blow-up whales or gators as filler. I shop the end-of-summer clearance sales when a lot of the pool toys go on sale, can buy a whole course of decorations for cheap!
Forgot this one, paper plates. Actually the nicer ones with more plastic are better Just tape a half dozen of them across the top rail. After they get comfortable, move them.
