🍀 The Clover 🍀

This is a great exercise for getting your horse to think. It focuses on balance, straightness and bend whilst giving both the horse and rider a physical and mental workout. It is a fantastic exercise to get you both thinking about riding turns and lines in preparation for riding a course of jumps.

Using four poles laid out in a cross, raise the outside end of each pole by a couple of inches. I have included a photograph of this to demonstrate.

Start the exercise on whichever rein the horse finds easier and remain on that rein for the first round, and trot or canter directly over the center of the cross and track right or left, whichever is easier, ride quarter of a 20m circle thinking about the balance and bend and then carry straight to go back over the center of the cross. Carry out this exercise a total of four times, working your way round each pole, and then change the rein and repeat the exercise on the opposite rein, remembering to allow the horse to come back to a walk on a loose rein in between changing reins to have a stretch for a few moments.

To make this exercise more challenging, you can also raise the poles in the middle, making sure the outside ends of the poles remain higher than the ends in the middle.