Simple gymnastic for horse on the forehand

[Fillabeana]

Hope someone here can help…

Background, I have a five year old, quite green mare whose sole use is as a cowpony. I ride her in a western saddle. In our work, sometimes we have to gallop out through the sagebrush and windfall timber to get around a cow. Sometimes we can manage to get around at a trot, but often it is a canter or a 450/500 mpm gallop, not usually faster.

Mare is, especially from a trot, really diving for a long spot onto her forehand if she jumps something. She doesn’t overjump, and she is really not at all careful about her feet. She is a bit better with the whole don’t- whack- your- pasterns- on- the- log thing since we went over a lot of small but solid pine logs, but careful with her feet she is not.

Nor is mare making much of a bascule, and we end up in a very downhill, unpleasant canter on the forehand.

Flatwork is coming along, she also (surprise!) tends to be on her forehand there as well. We have just recently established a nice leg yield, and that is definitely helpful.

When we are after a cow, I have no trouble sticking my feet home in the stirrups and grabbing mane so that I can jump in long stirrups. I rode to training level in a past life (30 years ago, recognized events, a few different horses) so I am not really intimidated by a 2’ or 2’6" log, I can stay out of her way/not hit her in the mouth/not get left behind at that height in my western saddle.

I have four (maybe six?) standards, which I could set up and use at home a little bit. I have an endless supply of varied height pine logs to jump over (in the forest, where the cows are, where I ride her 98% of the time), but getting them in a related distance would be a challenge. I could probably figure out how to set some sort of ground pole before and/or after a small log.

I could definitely dig out my Berney Brothers jumping saddle for a ride or two, but would rather use my western wade saddle for most of it.

Does anyone have a simple gymnastic exercise/progression that I could set up and pop over/through two or three times per ride?
I really like to fix things up so she can figure out for herself what to do with her body/legs/feet, but I’m not sure how to go about teaching herself to use herself better over these little jumping efforts.

[Duramax]

You can play with 3 or 4 trot poles set up in front of a steep X rail followed by a landing rail. Trot pole distances should be ~4.5 ft apart followed by 9 ft to the X and another 9 ft to the landing rail. The trot poles coming in should regulate the trot and encourage attentiveness/awareness of her feet and uphill balance. The landing rail after is good to kee the uphill balance. You can play with elevating the landing rail which is helpful for horses that are heavy on the landing or a bit casual.

You can also do bounces- I’d have either a placing pole or trot poles as is mentioned above to start then an X and ~9 ft to another X. You can also add the placing pole on the backside (at 9 ft) to make her land more uphill. You can keep adding bounces to encourage her to stay quick with her footwork and make her land and have to sit down on her haunches. If you add more bounces you should build subsequent ones progressively bigger than 9 ft (maybe adding 6 inches with each additional bounce but not going bigger than 12 ft and that would be on the very long side). As she gets confident with that you can bring the distances of the subsequent bounces in and keep them a little closer to 9 ft which will make her have to sit and compress her stride throughout the grid. I’d still keep the landing pole 9 ft after her last fence, and like above, you can elevate it too.

Another exercise which is quite simple is to have a vertical (height depends on horse’s ability/training, etc) and have a placing pole and a landing pole both set at 9 ft. Trot in. I like to elevate the landing pole to keep the uphill balance. The placing and landing poles dictate correct take off and landing and make the horse think about the footwork. You can go quite high with the vertical. I use that exercise for my students and I like them to be able to do it 3-6" higher than the level that they’re competing. So the novice horse can do it at 3’6" and the prelim horse at 4’. You’d be amazed at the bascule that it creates and the canter that they canter away in.

[Raine]

This caught my eye as I have a jumper who gets heavy in front. I saw the free video that Bernie Traurig has on Equestriancoach.com this month and adapted to my mare and the limited jumps I have. Trot in to small square oxer (2’6"ish) - 16.5 feet (tight!) to another small square oxer, 20’ (still tight!) to 3’3" vertical. Built up gradually, of course. It was so nice to feel my mare realizing she really had to be careful, rock back and compress to make it work. Loved loved loved it! Bernie recommended it as a gymnastic for a big-strided horse, but I loved it for a horse that wants to land heavy.

[Blugal]

I agree completely with Duramax and the nice thing about the equidistant bounce exercises is that you can approach from either direction (front to back or back to front). This is great if you have a limited area, and keeps your training even for both reins.

[Fillabeana]

Thank you so much, Duramax and Raine for your replies.

These exercises will be great to fool around with a bit.

Meanwhile, mare is doing really well with getting the leg yield solid, that has already changed things a bunch as far as weight on the forehand goes. We go straight toward a sagebrush, then I ask her to bend left, step right to pass the sagebrush, next sagebrush we bend right, step left…