I remember riding a clinic years ago and the clinician stressed that a rider should never, ever “chase” a horse out of water or you’d risk a spectacular crash (and from his experience, a broken collarbone).
According to four-star Australian event rider Ryan Wood of Woodstock Eventing, jumping a bank out of water is one of the most difficult things to train an event horse to do, but like many of the questions we present to our steeds, a positive introduction and slow progression of the exercise is key.
In this video, Ryan goes through the motions of teaching a young horse to jump a bank out of water. He begins by walking the horse up and down a small step sans water before letting the horse see the bank, standing quietly close to the base. Ryan then trots up the bank multiple times and eventually canters the exercise, finishing with a confident, more educated horse.
As the season comes to a close and the winter doldrums bear down upon us, we love seeing useful training sessions like this one from our friends with experience at the upper levels. For all of us, now is a great time to start catching up on educational reading material and working your way through all those DVDs and bookmarked video clips like this one so you’re ready to come out swinging in the 2016 season!
