There’s nothing I hate hearing more whilst walking a show-jumping course than ‘oh, my horse has never seen one of those before’ when you reach the fence with the water tray under it. Why not? Surely you want to give yourself the best possible chance of success (or at least the absence of humiliation) in the ring?
The solution is to go to B&Q and buy a cheap door. Their Value range ones are about £15, obviously without handles! Paint one side brilliant blue and the other side black and voila: you not only have a scary water-tray but also a faux ditch. The world of arena-based XC practice is now yours. You can build coffins, trakehners and ditch/palisades.
My youngsters will jump these as soon as they’re quietly popping a fence. In fact quite often they’ll have been over one before they’ve even had a jockey on board. Prepare at home and give yourself the best possible chance of success.
I use old strips of rubber matting!
Or a bit of black plastic from the silage clamp or old hayledge plastic but these do need weighing down!
The other thing I use is a cheap paddling pool from argos, filled with water for extra weight. Very realistic and very spooky! If they’ll jump that they’ll jump anything!