sorry
lost his scope :)

Pain, wrong equipment, been jumped too much with, as you say, inexperienced riders can make any horse stop jumping due to being put wrong on the fences and jumped too much by the professionals as well ( happens to anyone!) lost the joy of it. It is a little like Monty referring to his horse in childhood ( in the book Horses in my life) he trained and trained and trained and soon the horse starts to go sour and will not perform anymore on the show ground. Easy it happens to us all, good to remember Nr 1) the horse should have Fun and Nr2) we should have fun too! Warmest CI Ann Lindberg

I always wonder whether it is not possible to create a positive association to jumping over an obstacle. I often do a training of free jumping over a very low obstacle praising the horse a lot after having passed it without touching it. It is difficult to say whether this is really effective, maybe you could try it (passing first without bar, then bar on the ground, then about 50 cm above ground, once or twice a week).
Rudi

Dear All, a very good psychological way of training could be to:
Jump a pole on the ground, stop the horse after the "jump" and get of, have a handler lead the horse for a couple of seconds and then get on again and do the exercise again and repeat. Slowly raise the fence and you will have a horse that starts to want to jump again. Look to the whole picture, and always finish on a good note.
Monty has successfully rehabilitated horses that has gone "sour" with many of his professional riders on tour around the world. You will find Monty and CI Adrien Maby work together with a horse on one of the French demonstrations from 2008!
Good Luck and Keep On Equus All,
Warmest CI Ann Lindberg

I have learnt a lot from this thread, thank you. I have little experience of working with showjumpers, other than working at a very basic level with jumping so this has been useful.

thanks every one
but this thread made me a little bit annoyed since it seems it is unlikely to make him jump good again. but ill try your recommendations and let you know what happened
thanks

I am very interested in this thread as well. My daughter's sport pony has recently started refusing fences, but ONLY at shows. She easily clears everything she has tried and seems to enjoy the jumping, ears forward, eager. We are baffled as she doesn't seem to have the sour attitude and always performs perfectly in training. She is only jumped 3-4 days a week and most of those sessions are 30 minutes or less. She is also ridden on the trail. She had refusals initially when going back into show jumping about 6 months ago and then none. At her first rated show, she had a fast refusal and dd fell off. Then she was clean for a few shows and now started refusing again. Most recently: rode strong and confidently and skidded to a stop at second jump. Trainer thinks maybe flashbacks to a previous owner/experience. Any suggestions? We are new to MR, but have used other natural horsemanship techniques.

One of the girls in the barn uses a recorder for the noises during a show (speaker, applause,...) playing it loudly at home during the training. If this is the problem it may help.
Rudi

How does your daughter feel at the show? Is she more nervous and tense than at home (most people are!) - this could affect the horse's confidence too.

hi every one
the practice suggested by ann is working good he is showing good shoulder movement, sometimes, and shows willingness for jumps, again sometimes.
but he hits the jumps a lot
any suggestion ?

If he hits the fences it could very well be that he is careless and/or not quick enough to pull his feet in or up.
You may not be able to fix the problem inside the actual exercise (jumping in this case), but have to fix what is lacking with other exercises and then go back.
.
Try lots of pole exercises with varying distances so you have to lengthen and shorten the stride. Also poles that are raised in one end;raise opposite ends for several poles in a row. Lots of variations to choose from! :) (I'm sure there are tons of suggestions on the Internet!)
.
You can also do more ground work to strengthen back and hind muscles: lots of climbing (outdoors of course), lots and lots of quick transitions between the all three gaits. Anything that requires him to pick up his feet and think fast.

thanks