You can you saftly determine how high a horse can jump?

Question

My horse is 15 hands, and she's successfully cleared a 3'4" jump, and I think she has the potential to go much higher, but I don't want to mush her to hard. I mean, how can you tell when a horse has reached it's limit? When they start refusing and knocking down poles or when they jump wrong and brake a leg???

And I don't have enough money to send her to a pro trainer, or else i would, but I'm on my own, so does anyone have any tips?

Answer 1

Most horses can jump higher than that, but ask yourself why you are wanting to test her? If I asked you how high you can high jump, unless you have learnt how and got confidence in doing it, probably not as high as perhaps you could with the correct time, training and confidence? Horses take time and many hours of training to develop the skill and confidence to reach their full potential. The reason why we only jump small fences for a long time when training them is we do hours of small but metally challenging distances and combinations of fences so they learn to be clever with their feet and when they make the enevitable mistake they won't fighten themselves or injure themselves. The only people who can test their horses utmost skill are top level riders on top level confident horses, so please let your horse have fun over smaller fences and don't risk ruining her confidence or hurting herself because you want to know how high she could jump if trained correctly. Don't forget it is about having fun for both of you :)

Answer 2

Yes,,

Now i will ask you how many times has she cleared 3'4 and was it over a full course !!

if you say yes then I thin  you have the talent to try one more hole, at one fence not all of them

Any horse can jump 5 ft once But to do it in a course where you have oxers triples etc is much different.. O.K.

Now you say ,,you do not have the money to have her full time at a trainers ,, well most trainers will let you haul your horse to them once or twice a week to take lessons and or let them ride her for you and its not really that much



So I think thats your best option to do ,, and the safest for you and your horse , do you ? Think about it !!

Answer 3

Get a trainer and don't hurt the horse.