Polework for a horse that hasnt done it before?

Voy_Por

Ustedes
Jun 5, 2008
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Nottingham
Hi everyone - i am going to start some groundwork with a couple of TBs that we have - ex racers - so they probably have never done pole work before.

Do horses tend to take to it fairly well?

How far apart should the poles be? what commands or aids do i need to give the horse for it to move over the poles well?

Thank you everyone.
 
Yep, I think most horses are fairly okay with it. I introduce my little TB gelding to them not long ago and he was fine. I started off just leading over the poles once or twice (3 poles on the ground) and then longreined him over them.

I put a barrel alongside with a guidepole just to make it a bit easier for him.

Distance depends on the stride length of the horse, about 4 ft for your average 16hander, just use 4/5 of your footprints as a guide for spacing. Better to start off with slighter wider spaced poles I think and adjust where needed. Always use an uneven number of poles, 1/3/5 etc

What commands do you use for lunging? I use Trr-rot! So I just emphasise as the horse comes up towards the poles, trr-rot, trr-ot in time with him.
 
I had to completely reintroduce my lad to poles. Apparently the ones at his last home were okay, but the new ones were monsters :rolleyes: It was at a time when he was recovering from an illness, so I wanted to find things we could do that didn't really involve "work".

I literally began with a single pole laid out in the school, and let him go to have a roll and a bit of a charge around, and eventually he went over and had a sniff at the pole. Since it was evil ;) I popped him back on his rope and led him up to it, in a very relaxed "we're just having a walk" manner. When he saw me step over it without being eaten, he was quite happy to step over. Once he was comfortable doing that and had stopped shying away from the pole, I lay out a few with a stride between (one of his strides, not mine - to get the distance, scuff the sand flat with your boot, and lead the horse over where you're planning to put the poles to give you the impression of the length of their strides) and he had no bother walking over each of them, and then trotting over.

The next job was raising the end of one or two poles and building up to raising all the poles on opposite ends. I built boxes on the ground whereby he had to either stand in the box before moving on, or stand over a pole (forelegs on one side, hind legs on the other). A favourite game of my old RI was "Mazes" where you build a "passage" and "corners" out of poles and ride or lead the horse through the maze. When lunging, I introduced a few poles, both flat and with raised ends, to encourage him to pick his feet up, or to extend a stride.

Pole work can be a lot of fun :D
 
Excellent - thank you both for your replies.

We did a bit of work with poles about 45 minutes ago - not too much to start with - just some walking over them - a few times each - to introduce them to it.

It went quite well.

Will have another go on Wednesday with them when i go and see them :)
 
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