What do you Jump?

[Erickson Miniature Horses]

I've been making my own jumps lately and I'd really like to see pictures of other peoples homemade jumps made out of everyday items. I'm looking for easy to make and low cost very creative fun unique jumps! From whips across buckets to painted cardboard boxes I want to see them all!

 

[poniesrule]

Oh boy! You wouldn't believe the "junk" we've jumped. Safely of course

I'll see if I can get some pictures this weekend. I've mostly been digging around in the shop, & whatever I can find is what we've been using. The scarier & stranger the better! Flower pots (with the flowers of course) was a particularly scary one for the boys lol. We've used kitchen chairs, high chairs, tiny sawhorses, & coffee cans, rims, tires, piles of firewood (that one my older gelding hated!) and even old draft collars & hames for standards, and now are in the process of building some adjustable ones. For the actual pole, we've been using PVC pipe or wood, or a couple scrap pieces of wood lattice, things that will fall if knocked & not get twisted up in legs. Our lumberyard has a free bin I frequent, scored some small square boards that are perfect for cavaletti. I'm all about being cheap, ahem I mean thrifty.

 

[amysue]

I got a pile of 4x4 and 2x4 boards given to me after a friend demolished his deck so I built nice standards and painted rails. I do like to get creative though. Wooden latters and specialty pallets make nice "gates" pool nooldles are always fun as are plastic barrels and logs. Ive used telephone poles and hay bales. I like those plastic bags that you put over a bale to decorate it. Old fence boards make good planks and once the cows rub all of the bristles down on a street sweeper brush they make nice roll tops.

 

[paintponylvr]

Wow - Amysue makes some of our jumps look drab...LOL. Did ya notice that BEAUTIFUL rainbow in the background of the jumps pic?

These are jumps that many of our 1/2 shetland ponies and small arabs were jumping... These are barrels and cinder blocks for standards and pvc, landscaping timbers or 4x4s for poles. You could do something similar for minis - just scaled down.

Had to throw one in of this "gate". You could easily fabricate something like this out of lattice or ???

 

[paintponylvr]

The first time Sierra pointed Xena at the hay bale jump, she was VERY surprised. Xena took exception to the hay and left really good and deep (!) skid marks in the turf on the other side. Sierra ended up out of the saddle and up behind her ears and Xena braced her nose on the haybale while Sierra scrambled back into the saddle. TOO FUNNY!! I do have a photo but it's not online and I can't find it at the moment. That was during the Clinic - when they were riding properly with saddles.

If you can dig a water obstacle, do it so that you can not only have an inhand trail obstacle but the ability to set up jumps so that they jump in and out of the water, too. Can be as simple as setting up timbers/logs/4x4s with a tarp that will hold water for a little while...

WHOOPS! He jumped up the bank and over the log, then stopped before the water... Currently the water part of this obstacle is gone/dry.

Hmmm... don't have any pics of various tire jumps or the 2ltr flower jumps, jumping the 1/2 shetlands over the 100 and 150 gallon water tanks (bareback - my kids at one time were brave daredevils!!).

here's one using 5 gallon buckets as standards with 4x4s as poles. This mare is 36" tall.

and here's one with a lot of pvc...

 

[paintponylvr]

and one using styrofoam "standards" - free from Tractor Supply Center (TSC). You could make a "wall" out of these too!! One of the projects I have that I haven't gotten to - I wanted to cover these styrofoam blocks with either canvas, tarp, or even cloth making it either zippered or velcro so that you can remove the covering. Then I wanted to do different colors.... Some day.

and

and I'm finding out that there are a lot of pics missing that I thought I HAD of the girls jumping... hmmm....

You can also practice jumping your minis up on to obstacles and back off. Ditches out by the road are always fun, too. At one time our horse trailer was chest high on the smaller foals/shetlands, I think I have one picture of teaching them to jump up on it - but it's not online and not on this laptop...

This ditch just happens to be between our house and barn...

 

[paintponylvr]

and minis can JUMP 3 barrels end to end quite easily!! I don't have any pictures of any of ours doing this...

But here's one of my girlfriends' 40" shetland mare (I have permission to post this pic) -

 

[paintponylvr]

HEY - got one we can try... if you cut the end off of a feed bag (the new ones are all once piece type woven plastic), you can run a pole thru it and it can become a "moving" wall...

 

[poniesrule]

Paula, I just love your pictures! I really need to start taking more. I really like the idea of the feed sacks & Styrofoam blocks. My hubby works at a TSC type store that ships in & out a lot of products, I'm going to have him start collecting! He has gotten me a couple specialty pallets for my bridges that are awesome. thank you for the ideas!!!

 

[targetsmom]

How about a video? I just used this in an on-line FB hunter contest (still waiting for results). I thought our jumps were quite creative, including a in and out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYJ15dTp5v4 Note the teddy bear under the last jump.

We also use the barrel seen in background but not for the contest.

 

[Erickson Miniature Horses]

This is my homemade wall and bar jump with 5 gallon pales for standards.

 

[Rocklone Miniature Horses]

this is the only jump i have at the mo but i have some materials i need to get working with.

 

[paintponylvr]

Paula, I just love your pictures! I really need to start taking more. I really like the idea of the feed sacks & Styrofoam blocks. My hubby works at a TSC type store that ships in & out a lot of products, I'm going to have him start collecting! He has gotten me a couple specialty pallets for my bridges that are awesome. thank you for the ideas!!!

Hey - I would love to see pics of your bridge!

and here's a pic of one pony - stepping up into our "tall" horse trailer. I generally don't use this trailer for transporting ponies anymore, but use it for hauling hay. Every now and then, something occurs and I use it for ponies again. The last time, however, was when this photo was taken in April of 2013.

I love the Cannon Power Shot SX150IS camera that I have. It takes video and has a 12x zoom and is 14.1 megapixels. BUT the neatest thing about it is it's pretty simple to use - I can hand it to someone and they can point and shoot! The screen shows the pictured area w/o having it up to your eye - so they can see what they are taking pic of. Honestly, I don't even know how to use all of it's features. I use what I know... Then I take the card out of it and plug it into my laptop and download the pics to a file that I have called "originals". From there I open www dot picmonkey dot com and use it to edit my photos. I use the free sections of basic edits (crop, resize, some color adjustments - especially if too bright or in shadow, text). Then save the changes to a different spot on my computer (the pony files in which there is individual files for each pony, or equipment files, or family)... TADA and DONE. Then I post the pics up to my Picasa Photo Albums (Google). The one thing it doesn't do well is inside shots (such as at Congress or Nationals)... BUT that's probably one of those functions I don't know how to set and I'd forgotten to take my "book" with me. I didn't think to look it up previous to going to those.

AND SORRY to AnnasDreamer about stealing your post!

 

[paintponylvr]

Mary - I totally LOVED the video and the last jump with the teddy bear. I watched some of the others too.

AND what contest are you talking about?

 

[poniesrule]

Oh my goodness... we practiced jumping yesterday & I FORGOT to take PICTURES!!!! Ahhhhh!!!! Must be the pre-first-show-ever-coming-up-nerves!!! Will try again Sunday. Maybe. Hopefully. After all the work I go through to get set up, you'd think I would take pictures. Sigh.

I did find some on my phone from a couple weeks ago that show a couple of the jumps. The first one, my daughter (2) wanted to make Kenai jump, so I went with her. This one was along a fence with a wood stump as the other standard. Easy to push them to the jump, & they won't duck out the far side. (Side note, my daughter giggled so hard she about fell over... this is why I have minis!) The boards are junked pieces from our playset in the backyard. We had a couple windstorms that tore it apart a couple times, so we got to re-purpose. What I like about these boards is that they are lightweight and not very forgiving with touches. I think it helps to make them a bit more careful & keeps me honest around them too.

The second one shows how I use the small saw horses & a board. I can flip the board either way to raise or lower it about 4". Kenai is going to be my hunter. He really likes to jump. I don't have many pictures of my other gelding... he's way more hazardous over a course so the lighter boards help him out too.

The third is not a horse, but my nearly naked Mini Aussie showing off. I like this picture because it shows how I stack the sawhorses to raise the jump even more. (Please excuse the blinding white legs in all photos!!) So far I've had 2 stacked with the board low with Kenai. I don't see any reason to try higher since he likes it & is young yet.

The biggest thing is keeping the sessions short & sweet, which is hard to do when they're jumping well & we're having fun. But last night, my oldest daughter (7) was getting frustrated because her horse kept ducking out on the 3rd time through.... it wasn't fun for either of them, so we went over 2 in a row, and ended on a good note.

How about you AnnasDreamer? Do you have any pictures of the ones you've been making?

 

[targetsmom]

Hope this is OK to post here: There is a page on Facebook for Miniature Horse Showmanship with ( a judge and trainer)..... who offers on-line showmanship and hunter classes. It was great fun and I hope there will be more of this. No show clothes (as you can see from video), no Coggins, no clipping, etc. Oh, and I won that class. I can also see what I need to work on as Princess did take some canter strides between jumps.

 

[fourluckyhorseshoes]

Just mowed the yard so I had to take down the jumps and the yard is currently set up for driving obstacle, so the jumps are not set up. I love spray painting the poles bright colors.

 

[Erickson Miniature Horses]

These are my homemade jumps, the first one is a wooden handle off an old shovel painted with pink stripes and the second jump is two peices of white foam board colored to look like a brick wall.