Client Eric Bull Discusses Building a Schooling XC Course at Home

Building a Schooling Course at Home

If you have the space for it, a schooling course at home can be a great asset to your training program. After deciding that you have enough room, the challenge is that you need multiple fences to really get the job done. Usually the best solution is to install a few permanent features and then add some portables so that you can mix things up to ask different questions in your training.

A simple ditch, a simple water crossing, and a few small portables of different sizes – BN through Training or Prelim, are a good start.You need fences of different shape, too(see photos): a table, a rolltop, an oxer, something with a cutout underneath it (which often catch young horses out on course). 

Keep in mind that while portable jumps are just that – portables - dragging them around every time you want to ask a new question, in reality, is inconvenient. Well-built fences that are lightweight enough that you don’t need superhuman strength (or a tractor) to move them every time you want to change something is important when you consider what types of portables you want.

We’ve found that a lot of people who are trying to get young horses going confidently are starting to see corners, skinnies, wedges and brush at Prelim and even at Training level. All of those types of questions can be introduced in a small, easy fashion.

While it can seem somewhat daunting to buy all the jumps it might take to get a horse through the levels, when you break it down to its simplest form it doesn’t take as much as you might think. The whole thing is actually quite simple when you do it properly: the progression of the levels really makes sense, and there are simple ways to look at how to prepare your horse to move up through the levels, one question at a time. 

Another way to break it apart is to break the course into its simpler components. A cross-country course consists of galloping fences and combinations; as the levels go up, the number of combinations increases and the complexity of the questions increases. In your schooling you can build all these combinations simply, building your horse’s confidence in the process.  

For instance you can build a ditch, then create a ditch and rails, a “coffin”, and whatever else you can thing of that involves a ditch, using a combination of portable cross-country jumps and standards and rails. With a little imagination, you can school multiple questions effectively. And of course when there are no constraints on space AND budget, the only limit is your imagination.

ETB Equine Construction Update: Developments to Cross-Country Course at Stableview

Eric and his crew have been working on a new competition course at the state of the art Stableview in Aiken, SC. Back home in Virginia after a trip south, he reflects on the latest improvements and the work that is yet to take place before the farm’s debut competition at the end of September.

Terrain and Trees

Stableview is in great shape given the fact that the event is still four months away. The grass is growing and all the footing is done. It’s a really pretty site; it has enough big trees to make it pretty but enough sunlight that the grass grows well. We did all the site work last February and they seeded last spring with Bermuda grass. By September the turf will have been established over a year and a half.

Established Turf on Right

They have an irrigation system, so not only has the grass been planted for a year and a half, it’s been irrigated all that time and will be irrigated all summer. Grass is easier to grow with sun, water and fertilizer. You can’t control the sun, but you’re pretty much guaranteed sun in South Carolina in the summer. Aiken is historically a dry place. It’s not a big agriculture area because it’s so dry. When you add water though, you’ve got the complete picture for creating good turf. The people at Stableview have installed a K-line irrigation systemhttp://www.k-linena.com/ which they also use at Kentucky and Richland Park.

Portables

 The course includes beginner novice through preliminary levels. We delivered 80 % of the portables last year and they were painted leisurely over the summer. We did our last walk around with Mark Phillips 3 or 4 weeks ago, where we planned out the course and determined which portables will go where on the course. I think I have about a dozen portables left to build for them. Most of the existing portables are still stacked up – we’re going back down in a few weeks and will store them all in a barn; they have good storage space, and South Carolina summers are actually harder on jumps than the winters.

Trakehner

Last week we built all the post and rail and log type jumps: we hung the logs on the Trakehners, put logs on the walls into the water, and that kind of work.

Trakehners (L-R: BN to Prelim height)

This will be their first event, to be held the last weekend of September. The strategy in scheduling it then is that it will probably be a small horse trials – it will still be high quality and run properly, but with smaller entries than during the big competition season, so they can have a chance to make sure everything works. Often the logistics like parking and where to put the food vendors and things like that can take a while to figure out. If you have 80 horses in the queue it’s easier to work out a problem than if you have 400 horses in the queue! Shelly Spielman, who’s been around for a long time is running both the facility and the horse trials, so everyone will be in good hands.

Water

We built the water, bank, ditch and Trakehner and sunken road complexes last February.  They’re simple, eloquent complexes; look at an event Red Hills, which took place this weekend, and there’s a lot of carving and paint and so on – Stableview is not terribly flashy but it’s very high quality and horse friendly. I think in time we might add some “fancier” things, but you’re always better starting off with jumps that horses like jumping and making it fancier in the future. There’s a Half Keyhole on Prelim and some good, big brushes, to keep it interesting. It looks good but it’s not flashy and busy – it looks very classy as a whole. It’s built for horses to learn how to jump and move on to the next level.

Approach to Water

Pretty soon they’re going to build a schooling course, which will be separate from the competition course, also from beginner novice up to prelim. It will be on a small piece of property separate from the competition course, and will have a water, bank and ditch and will be open for trucking in for schooling, and for their boarders. The biggest advantage is that it’ll take traffic off their competition course. We’re going to get to work on that this spring.

-Eric