Table
A table is a fence with height and width, with the top of the table being one piece of material (unlike an open oxer, which is not "filled in"). The horse is encourage to jump over the entire obstacle at once, similar to an oxer, however there are times where the animal may accidentally touch down on, or "bank," the top. Because of this, tables should be built strongly enough to support the horse landing on it.
Tables are also usually built so that the back part is slightly higher than the front, or with a piece of wood at the back, so the horse can easily see that there is width to the obstacle and therefore judge it appropriately.
Tables can get extremely wide, and generally test the horse's scope. They are intended to be jumped at a forward pace and a slightly long stride.
Read more about this topic: Horse Jumping Obstacles
Famous quotes containing the word table:
“the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-granted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we—because we don’t question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted.”
—Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968)