Tuesday, August 30, 2011

A random bit of "what the...?"

As a quarter horse owner I signed up for America's Horse Daily: a service from the American Quarter Horse Association that sends me a quarter horse related email every day. This popped into my inbox this morning. At first glance I was impressed that she was still jumping even though she lost her stirrup, then I looked closer.

Ick all around is all I can say. Is this how most people are taught to jump these days?
Ramblings courtesy of at

10 comments:

  1. BarbaraAugust 30, 2011 at 8:48 AM

    Laying on the neck, while letting your leg swing, seems to be the norm over small fences. All the criticism of the small fences and no one in the classes of bigger fences starts here, IMO. In order to jump a bigger fence riders taught to lay on the neck would have to go back and start all over again learning to jump. One of my pet peeves.... I try not to go on and on and on.... :-)

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  2. smazourekAugust 30, 2011 at 9:08 AM

    I'd be willing to read it if you went on and on :)

    I've been dumped by horses who refused to jump when I mistakenly reclined on their necks. Got me out of that habit real fast!

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  3. WolfieAugust 30, 2011 at 10:38 AM

    I don't know anything about jumping, but it seems to me that basically lying on top of your horse's neck would make it difficult for the horse to actually elevate itself over the jump, no?

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  4. smazourekAugust 30, 2011 at 10:40 AM

    10 out of 10 horses agree with that statement, Wolfie ;)

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  5. TBAAugust 30, 2011 at 1:18 PM

    Haha, I agree with everyone else. I always see pictures of top hunter riders and can't imagine how they win. They look ridiculous and I don't understand how they stay on! A lot of the time they're looking down, their head is almost level with their horse's withers and their leg is almost slipped back to the horse's flank. Really?

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  6. smazourekAugust 30, 2011 at 1:22 PM

    New breaking trend: Planking on horseback!

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  7. FrizzleAugust 30, 2011 at 4:27 PM

    Aaack! George Morris would eat her for breakfast...after calling her dumber than a bag of hair, lol.

    Unfortunately, you even see a lot of top hunter riders lying on the horse's neck. Apparently, they do it in order to give the impression that the horse's jump is so powerful that it launches them out of the saddle or something (GM explained it in one of his PH articles and it was something along those lines; and of course he did NOT approve).

    The problem is that it gives people the impression that THAT is good form. I mean, John French won the Hunter Derby Finals last year and the pic of him on the cover of PH was him lying on the side of Rumba's neck. :-/

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  8. AnonymousAugust 30, 2011 at 4:35 PM

    Get them a few jumping lessons without stirrups and arms crossed in front of their chest; like you say, nothing cures bad habits as fast as a couple of falls!

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  9. smazourekAugust 31, 2011 at 9:46 AM

    Exactly Frizzle, images like these give new riders the wrong impression. How can you have good form if you don't know what it looks like?

    twohorses- I'm all for that but apparently riding without stirrups is hard and requires work so nobody wants to do it. Poo on them I say!

    Story- too funny, I don't remember either.

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  10. Grey Horse MattersAugust 31, 2011 at 8:36 PM

    This is so wrong on so many levels. I've basically done equitation and hunters for years and this isn't the way to do it correctly. I'm not even going to go into a rant here because I could make this into more posts than anyone would care to read. Such a shame people are being taught incorrectly and the horses suffer for it.

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