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.
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