The Fish

The Equisense sensor works with an app that you can put on your phone to record the information gained from the sensor. Even if you don't have the sensor, there is a valid use for the app. They have a bunch of exercises available for free if you need some ideas for schooling your horse.

Some of the dressage ideas.

They are located under the "Learning" tab, and are broken down into Flatwork, Dressage, Jumping, Lunging, Hacking, Rider, and Cross Country (which is empty at this point). The exercises are similar to the ones in the 101 Jumping Exercises / Dressage Exercises series, but don't have as much information on how to ride the exercise as the books do. They are rated with a level so you can pick exercises to suit your current riding abilities.

Some of the jumping ideas.

It is a newer feature and the library isn't huge, but they are constantly adding to it. It's nice to be able to look for an idea while I'm at the barn if I feel the need for inspiration. Equisense often does a short video about one of the exercises and posts it on their Facebook page.

Some of the rider ideas - mostly core exercises. I really should do some of them. 

Facebook was where I discovered the Fish exercise.


I thought that it looked like it could be super fun, and have a lot of options on how it could be ridden.

Black = poles (10 ft), blue lines = trot, red lines = canter (bounce distances). My Paint drawing is not totally to scale!

I set it up when I was out late on Saturday night so that I could ride it on Sunday morning, since I had to get early rides in to beat the worst of the heat. It took a little bit of finagling to get the center all lined up, but it wasn't too bad. With 10' poles it worked out to 9' bounce distances down the middle, and also parallel to the vertical poles on the end and middle.

Here it is set up in the arena (that's Cisco's fat tummy on the left)

With Cisco, we trotted through one side of a triangle, with the focus being more on just hitting where I aimed him. It worked out quite nicely and we seemed to find a good spot pretty well every time. 

I did attempt the trot straight down the middle with him, but it was a gong show for a couple of reasons - a horse had just left the arena and he was sucking towards the gate end, he had spooked at something he saw out the door at the other end that we were heading towards, and narrow points of the triangles are kinda hard to do at a trot at the best of times. 

I don't think I would recommend trotting through the center, just leave that for the canter. 

By the time I got on Phantom it was noon and super hot and muggy, so I knew my ride on her was going to be pretty quick. I put my stirrups up a hole and just played over the poles. I haven't done any jumping flatwork in ages, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go when I tried to canter through the middle. 

It actually rode pretty good! 

I mean, there were only two times that I didn't see my distance so I panicked and threw my body at her and said "go" and she was all, "whoa whoa whoa, this is a turtle exercise. Just chill. I gots it." Not bad for not doing canter poles in like two years.

If you enter at the pointy end it's pretty easy for the horse to just slightly fall one way if they feel the need to give themself a bit more space, so you have to ride that part pretty accurately. If you come through the center, you can turn and have the option of cantering through parallel to one of the vertical poles or over the part where the tail joins the body (if that makes sense) and then turn and canter through the center again. 

I would recommend setting this up across the center of the arena so that you can enter from both leads. I had to set it up on a diagonal because of all the other stuff set up in the arena, so it was a little trickier to make sure I did it on both leads.

I really liked this exercise and I will definitely use The Fish again!