School’s out with Tina Cook

My mum was always brilliant at making hacks fun for me and my ponies, and was forever setting up home-made obstacles or looking out for little branches to hop over. Besides the excitement, it meant we were always expecting the unexpected – we were ready for a challenge and confident tackling new things. This, in essence, is how you prepare your horse for success in eventing, and cross-country in particular. By making him comfortable with spontaneity and ready for questions outside the familiar footing of the arena he’ll be a bold, brave cross-country machine in no time.

Exercise 1: Make a splash

Water is a potential sticking point for many horses and as you approach this question in a competition environment, you need to know your horse is comfortable and confident with getting his feet wet. This is absolutely something you can tackle out on a hack but beware – fail to choose the right conditions and you can create more problems than you solve. Considerations before taking your horse to water include…

picking your puddle It needs to be a decent size – too small and your horse will be encouraged to try and jump it or skip to the side. Essentially, you need to make it painfully obvious that his job is to walk through the water and that this is his clearest and easiest route

taking your time Going for a paddle, especially on a horse who’s young and unexperienced, isn’t a job for a 20-minute hack on a day where you’ve got heaps of time pressure. The ideal scenario is you and your horse staying as relaxed as possible with capacity to walk through 10 times if you need to until the puddle’s no longer a big deal

treading familiar territory The perfect puddle is one that’s formed over a familiar track where you and your horse know the lie of the land. Don’t start splashing through somewhere that could be surprisingly deep or uneven – while your horse needs to expect the unexpected, you don’t want to frighten him

Jumping on a hack

Popping over natural obstacles can help teach your horse to go with the flow and become used to being pushed just a little out of his comfort zone. However, you only achieve these benefits when you do your due diligence as a rider.

This means riding up to the hedge, ditch or log you’ve found to assess the footing on take-off and landing (you never know where you’ll find a rabbit hole) and resisting the temptation to jump anything if you’re hacking alone.

Ultimately, the aim is to boost your horse’s confidence, so don’t do the opposite by asking him to tackle something that may frighten or injure him.

You can find more hacking exercises with Tina Cook in August Horse&Rider – on sale now!