Horse Obstacle Course Ideas

Setting up your own obstacle course at home is a great way to train your horse to be self-reliant and fearless under saddle. Incorporating common trail obstacles into your everyday training sessions also helps relieve the boredom that some horses experience when doing the same thing day after day. You can create your own ever-changing equine obstacle course using everyday objects, including many you probably already have around the barn.

  1. Serpentine

    • The serpentine is one of the easiest obstacles to create at home. All you need is a set of cones and a measuring tape. Place the first cone, then measure a set distance and lay down the rest of the cones. With the serpentine obstacle in place you can start moving the horse through it, first at a walk and later at a trot. Make the serpentine course more challenging by moving the cones closer together. For a beginning horse and rider, 20 to 25 feet apart is a good distance for the cones. As the team gains more experience, move the cones down to 10 or 15 feet apart.

    Bridge

    • You can incorporate a bridge into your obstacle course and teach the horse to navigate that common obstacle. You can purchase a bridge ready made at some horse supply retailers. Those bridges come with a weight rating to ensure it is strong enough to hold horse and rider.

    Gate

    • Learning to navigate gates is important, and you can build a gate into you obstacle course. If you have a gate on your property, you use it as part of your course, moving your horse close to the gate to open it, asking him to move sideways to open it and then sidepassing back to close it again. Otherwise, you can create your own gate with two jump standards and a rope. Simply loop one end of the rope over each jump standard and practice opening and closing your "gate."

    Dog Leg

    • Backing up is a vital skill on the trail, and back-through obstacles are a mainstay of trail classes at horse shows as well. You can create a challenging dog-leg back-through obstacle with six poles. Place one set of two poles parallel to one another,then a second set at a 45 to 90 degree angle to the first. Do the same with a third set of poles to finish the dog leg. You can make the obstacle less challenging by moving the poles further apart, or more challenging by moving them closer together.

    Tarp

    • A tarp makes a good, and cheap, addition to your obstacle course. Laying a tarp on the ground and asking the horse to move over it is also a good training exercise, since it teaches the animal to respond to your commands and helps it develop the trust needed to do something that at first might seem frightening. Weigh the tarp down at each corner to prevent it from moving around when the horse steps on it.

    Sidepass

    • Sidepassing is an important skill for a horse, both out on the trail and in the show ring. To sidepass, the horse moves its legs laterally without moving forward or back. You can create a sidepass obstacle for your horse simply by placing a pole on the ground. Ride the horse halfway over the pole, leaving the front legs on one side of the pole and the back legs on the other. Cue your horse with your leg and ask him to move away from the pressure to start the sidepass.