Janet L Jones, PhD

Going back to early jumping, I need to say a few words about some common practices with green horses in which they are faced with jumps that are needlessly complex. When I say "keep it simple," I don’t mean “keep it easy.” Easy and simple are two different things. Nowadays, it’s common to start young horses over fences by setting obstacles that are needlessly complicated instead of simple to see and use. Good jumping in beautiful form with a calm mindset is hard enough without making it more difficult for beginning horses.

One of the needless complexities I’m referring to is the use of guide poles. These are poles that slant upward from the ground to the left and right sides of the top rail in a fence. They serve the purpose of a funnel, as if showing the horse how to get to the center of the top rail. That might be helpful if horses were oil and needed a funnel—but they’re not. Or if riders didn’t have legs to guide with—but we do. Or if trainers had not already taught youngsters to cross at the center of each ground pole and low rail—but they should.

The actual result of guide poles is to confuse the young horse, largely because they create visual illusions. This horse is now approaching a pick-up-stix game, with poles reaching out in several different directions and at multiple angles. I’ve trained several hundred beginning horses how to jump and never used a guide pole. True has never seen one. I encourage you to avoid them, too.

Guide poles are not just used on entry to a fence as if to prevent run-outs, though that’s most common. They also appear now and then on the back side of a fence, to correct a horse who tends to land too far to the left or right. Again, the way to fix this problem is easy—just take a step back. Give the horse more instruction approaching and exiting lower poles, or ground poles, straight over the center without any help. The rider should not need to guide the horse with her legs after sufficient instruction and practice at this. It’s a form of self-carriage.

Another pet peeve is the placing pole, either before or after a fence. Yes, occasionally it can be helpful to use one placement pole a stride away from a jump, especially when we are teaching the horse to adopt a consistently longer or shorter distance than he would select himself. True has hopped through sequences that include one placing pole on the ground a stride away from a low vertical, and managed just fine. But multiple placing poles, laid a stride apart for four or five strides, are another example of a confusing visual illusion that causes the horse to be unable to use his own body and mind in an intelligent way. They preclude the option of self-carriage and often make the horse nervous. And when multiple placing poles are set a few inches too close together or too far apart, I’m sorry: “Houston? We have a problem.”

A few trainers use multiple placing poles set one stride apart in front of a fence to slow a horse’s approach or exit. My experience has been that they almost always speed the horse’s approach by making him nervous. And nervous he should be: cantering through a series of placement poles while focusing on a sizeable fence up ahead is very hard mental work. The horse’s feet must land in exactly the right spots to prevent him from stepping on a pole, which will then roll out from under him. There are much better ways to reduce rushing. Remember, those poles are invisible to the horse as he canters over them. You try it blindfolded sometime!

We’ve probably all seen young or green horses asked to negotiate a single jump with a conglomeration of needless complexity. This often starts with four trot poles, followed by a placing pole, then a vertical or oxer made of more poles. On each side of the jump are guide poles in the approach and again on the exit. Then we have another placing pole one stride away from the back side of the jump, allegedly to slow the exit.

That’s a total of 12 poles placed at various angles of one jump, even without including multiple placing poles. It’s needlessly complex, serves no good purpose, and is extremely confusing – especially to a horse who’s only just learning to take flight. Instead? Keep it simple!