Champion working hunter rider Katy Green – based in Warwickshire – is one of our most successful competitors on the workers circuit. Katy specialises in the horse workers, but also competes some native ponies in the larger mountain and moorland working hunter pony divisions. Most recently, we saw Katy jump to glory at Royal Windsor where she was champion with her own mare, Vulcanite.
With the Royal International Horse Show just around the corner (22-27 July), many riders will be training towards tackling the impressive bullfinch at Hickstead, especially if they have qualified their horse or pony for the first time. Here Katy shares her advice on how to teach your horse to jump a bullfinch with confidence.
Why are bullfinches a problem?
“Bullfinches are hard to train for because you want your horse to be careful most of the time and leave all the poles up, but then in this instance you are asking them to jump through something,” explains Katy.
For those who are not familiar with a bullfinch, it is a brush fence which has less dense greenery, twigs or foliage extending from the top, which the horse should push through, similar to when jumping an untrimmed hedge in the hunting field. In this situation the judge does not want to see the horse jump over the top of the branches and clear the whole fence.
“It can be hard for the horse to understand when you are training to accommodate one fence when everything else they learn is about clearing the element,” adds Katy. “So when they first see a bullfinch, unless trained correctly, they think that they need to jump over the top and clear it. It’s even harder for the horses who are naturally very careful to understand.”
Katy Green gallops to glory in the working hunter classes at Royal Windsor Horse Show, riding her own 16-year-old mare Vulcanite.
How to teach your horse to jump a bullfinch
When training, Katy emphasises that it’s important to take your time. In an ideal world you need an assistant on the ground to help build your bullfinch up steadily without you having to dismount and remount every time you need to change your fence.
“I always take teaching them to tackle a bullfinch really slowly,” Katy says.
To begin you need a brush fence set up, in to which your assistant can poke greenery or soft twigs in the top of the brush.
Step one
“To start with, add the bullfinch material to each side leaving a big gap in the middle so that the horse understands it is a fence to jump.”
Approach and jump the middle of the fence as normal.
Step two
“As the horse gains confidence and understanding, add a little foliage to the middle – and then a little more – but always keep it lower at the centre so they begin to get the feel of bruising through it and it touching them.”
It’s important not to overface the horse and make them feel they need to jump high to clear the greenery at this stage.
Step three
“We then add more greenery, little by little, to build into a fuller bullfinch,” says Katy.
Once the horse is confidently jumping through the bullfinch, and isn’t worried by the feeling of the foilage touching their legs, then you can call it day for that training session. But beware thinking that once you have done this, that’s your training done.
Step four
To ensure the horse’s confidence and understanding is established, you will need to repeat the process a few times.
“When we come to train for a bullfinch the next time, we restart the process,” explains Katy. “I will very rarely just run a horse at a full bullfinch, especially when they are only just learning about them – it’s fine once they are very established and confident – but at the training stage I wouldn’t.”
Continue repeating the process until you and your horse feel confident and ready to face a full bullfinch in the ring.
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