# Training Tips
Your horse’s vision; training and competition
Skinnies
Showing your horse the spooky jump fence.
A horse’s vision before a jump is different to a human because their eyes are on the side of their head, giving both binocular vision and monocular vision as they gallop at jumps. The eye shape is elongated which changes the focal point when the head is lifted or flexed in. Understanding your horses view can help you train and compete better.
Skinnies
When approaching a skinny you want the horse to feel comfortable and used to looking through the flags while it has binocular vision. This is when it can judge distance, height and depth and occurs on approach just over 20 meters out or about 5-6 strides. At this point both the horse and rider will have sharp vision on the fence. At the beginning of the last stride before takeoff, about 3 meters from the fence the horse will loose focus of the jump and relies on it’s trust of their rider to support the rhythm, pace, and balance to continue to the base in an even and balanced stride. The horse knew where the jump was and jumps, based on this information. Something we might not be comfortable with, but they have been calculating their jump like this from the beginning of their jump training. So, if you reliably support the rhythm, pace, and balance at this time, they will be the stars they are!
It’s not all that easy-peasy though, from 5 strides out the horse does have other optical options which we don’t have interest in. It has monovision out of the left and right eye. This vision feeds information about the surroundings that also factors into the horse’s decision to jump or run out. In training we want to use a method that can tap into what the horse gets conditioned to look at and reward and repeat the experience. The trust a horse learns in training will help the horse to take off and want to land on the other side of the fence, that was in its vision during 5-2ish strides out. Most horses are a little far-sighted (43%) compared to near-sighted( 23%). Far sighted horses are often better jumpers as they can see the jump details sharply from further away giving them more preparation both physically and mentally.
When about 3 meters and less from jumping a skinny fence, it will only see the skinny out of one eye and have views of open space with the other. This is something that cross country course builder Mike Etherington-Smith says, “horses do work skinnies out.” What makes them challenging is when the front is smaller and round compared to the back part, making it harder to read. To train these jumps a few concepts from the horse’s vision can help.
Start with a small well supported small simple skinny that has an open view behind it. Ride the horse on a straight line, keeping their gaze on the jump from 20 meters out in a marching walk to about 5-4 meters out, (less than 2 strides) and halt. Now wait, and don’t let the horse look off the line, you want the horse to focus on the skinny at the halt till the horse raises its head and looks through the middle of the skinny and into the distance with pricked ears, even if just briefly. You might have to be patient and creative to get the horse to look through the jump in training. Once they gaze forwards they have accepted going to the other side of the jump, pat a reward and clearly direct them away, or if the jump is small, close the leg and keep a connection to trot forward and complete the jump. You are training their focus to look ahead and not for the distractions of the mono-vision information. Once the horse has indicated it has looked to the other side the rider can start training to jump the skinny from a trot or canter and increase difficulty with each session. Repeating the session before new skinnies are attempted can build at system for the young horse, and systems often build trust. Remember it is the rider’s job to maintain a straight track, the right rhythmic pace, and a balanced position to the jumps base to develop trust and partnership.
This technique can also work for ditch jumps. Once a horse looks to the other side in binocular vision, they have connected with going there.
The spooky show jump before your round
When showing a horse, a spooky show jump before your round, you want to approach the fence on the track you will be on during the course. Halt about 4-5 meters out, (less than 2 strides) and try to guide the horse’s vision to look through the jump to the other side. Going up to the fence is fine, but the horse’s binocular vision of the jump will be in a blind spot at a close distance, so getting them to look through the jump is better. Be aware of the horse’s head position, if it is on the vertical it will see with sharp vision downwards at the base of the fence, which may not be that helpful. If their nose is out, it will be able to see over the jump to the other side, which may be more helpful.
Although there are only a few moments in the ring to do this, you want the horse to look over a spooky jump if possible. I find avoiding going right to the base can achieve this better than holding a horse’s head down close-up to the fence. While the horse sees the fence, control letting them look left or right and be careful to not panic the horse with sharp correcting of the head position at the same time as asking the horse to move towards to the jump, separate the requests to keep a positive mindset for the round.
This blog discusses advanced topics, however understanding your horses vision can help in many other instances and is good knowledge to add to your kit of horse knowledge. Happy training.
