Megan and Kirby Park Invader
We were very fortunate to spend some time with Olympic silver medallist Megan Jones recently at her home in Hahndorf, South Australia and meet some of her up and coming horses as well as see how Kirby Park Stud has been developing since we were last there.
In this first article Megan introduces us to Kirby Park Invader (Freckles) a home bred thoroughbred/ Australian Stockhorse cross by Kirby Park Nantamboo, the sire of Kirby Park Joy that competed for Australia at the London 2012 Paralympics and 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Kentucky ridden by Grace Bowman.
Freckles is a 5 year old who has been brought on slowly by Megan since being broken in but is already showing a lot of promise. As she tells us in the video below, Freckles is quite a hot horse so Megan designs exercises for him to keep him focussed and listening to her during jumping training and to help curb his desire to rush his fences
Kirby Park Stud has two large sand arenas and a beautiful grass jumping arena and for these exercises Megan and Freckles headed out to the large sand jumping arena. Megan mentioned that she rides with slightly longer stirrups for jumping on Freckles and she uses a safety stirrup is a French stirrup called SoftUp Pro, a single branch riding stirrup. The flexible outside ABS branch guarantees release of the rider from the stirrup in the event of a fall.
Megan starts by warming up in walk, trot and canter in both directions, holding the reins in one hand. As she changes direction, she changes the hand that the reins are held in so that the reins are always in the outside hand
Once Freckles is warmed up, Megan introduces some poles and a small cross rail, again in one hand and using the bridged reins. To bridge your reins, simply put one rein over the top of the other, to form a ‘bridge’ about 10cms long, which you hold between your hands and which fits over the horse's neck.
Bridging the reins in one hand (above) and two hands (below)
Now taking the reins in both hands, but still using the bridging rein, Megan bounces through the three small cavaletti type fences in a row, using halts where needed to ensure that Freckles is still paying attention to her rather than rushing at the last fence.
Megan then adds in the small jump at the end of the line, canters straight towards the camera and halts. Watch the straightness of her line and how Freckles is always rewarded for coming back smoothly. Megan was really pleased with how Freckles was responding to having a few people around and on the arena with him as he can be quite spooky.
“Even now he can be really spooky of things moving around or people suddenly appearing. Today he’s done really well with people on the arena filming, photographing and popping up where he least expects them! It’s all part of the training and it’s a good experience for him” she says
Once that is happening easily she adds in the last fence and follows on with her figure of eight exercise, still using halts throughout the exercise whenever she feels that Freckles is getting a bit strong and rewarding his coming back to her with pats
Now let's tackle something a bit different Freckles - Megan shows Freckles the small apex built with two poles on a barrel
Easy to set up at home for practising accuracy and control, you can jump it this way ……….
......... or this way
The barrels also give Megan and Freckles a chance to jump something skinnier and a bit spooky – when Freckles run past the barrels at one point Megan calmly uses the halt and reinback to get him back focussed on the fence and straight.
The long rein walk can be used not only at the end of the session but is a good way to reward at any point in the training session
In the next training session with Megan at Kirby Park we meet Kirby Park Irish Stout
We also find out more about Kirby Park Riding School and have a gallery of photos by Libby Law from our day at Kirby Park Stud
