Flying Changes

[kateandjack]

 Hello everyone, I'm new but have a question:

Have you got any tips on how I can teach my jumping pony to do automatic flying changes?
When I flip him onto the other rein he will change with his front end but not with his back legs, and then he gets upset and frustrated.
Any ideas?
Thanks
 

Comments

[thelitas]

Fair enough. I can understand why hunters would not want the horse to just think it can change when the leg moves. (a la the automatic changes of western horses)

However, I come from a school of thought where as soon as the horse isn't falling over himself at the canter (3-5 years old) he needs to learn to change.

Yes, I had two 3 year olds last year doing flying changes, and Wolita was doing them as well.

I had a few very negative experiences doing it the way that you were taught, with my main failure being Clara. I do consider her a failure in my training program, even though she's doing hunter stuff and doing very well at it, and she won a lot of lower level dressage stuff with me.

Clara had that experience of doing everything BUT the change. A lot of counter canter. One step canter-walk-canter transitions. One step through the trot. A horse with 6 gaits could score 8-9 on the counter canter just because she was SO GOOD at it. But it came to that stupid change and she'd counter canter the whole thing.

I thought it was me, so I started working with our babies. They all responded in the same manner she did. So I went back to the way I always did it with the babies; figure 8's with a change in the middle. If they miss the hind a few times, bring the haunches more the next time or speed them up so they're unbalanced and find the only way it doesn't feel weird is to fix that lead.

Eventually, the babies all figured out changes on the leg, the handful that needed to start tempis started tempis.

Clara, however, is 14 and still has no flying change from the seat. She does have automatic changes while jumping, so it isn't that she physically can't do it, she just absolutely does not understand and/or refuses to come from the leg/seat/whip/spur/ground person.