Ditches and drains

I have never heard anything referred to as a drain in conversation.  You certainly see the term in books and articles, usually in reference to hunting in Ireland, home of some legendary ditches.  I have two appropriate excerpts, both from Irish Adventure; A fox Hunter's Holiday by Margaret Cabel Self.

The Scarteen country has many ditches, varying in width from six to twelve feet, and universally deep.  When a horse is unfortunate enough to slide into one of the Scarteen "drains," he is lucky if, by stretching his neck, he can see out over the edge.  The general advice in jumping these drains is not to look down.  Excellent advice from a horsemanship angle it is, too, for, as everyone knows, as long as your eyes are up and your heels are down you will never part company with your horse.  If, on the other hand, one does steal a peek while tottering on the brink, in addition to the joy of accomplishment which one experiences in negotiating the drain, one has also that wonderful feeling of having come safely through a great peril.  I would say that the size and depth of the Irish drains and the steepness of their banks have a great deal to do with the Irishman's belief in a personal deity.

I have ridden over very few ditches and all of them were small.  Because we encounter them so infrequently, most horses handle them badly.  And most riders in this country prefer to have a little more control.  There are some ditches that are best "flown" or jumped, possibly with a bit of speed.  There are other times when it's preferable to walk or slide right to the bottom.  Yes, that would be a dry (or nearly dry) ditch.  Evidently they don't have those in Ireland!  But there definitely are places where you do not want the horse to jump; you want him to walk in and walk out, whether it's a ditch or a creek crossing or something else.

But back to ditches.  I have ridden over a few ditches or stream crossing with steep banks where the horse slid part way down and then jumped across, whether he landed at the top of the bank or halfway up.  Usually these landings are jolting!  Occasionally you find a horse that knows how to handle these without being so abrupt.  The sheer number of them in Ireland means the horses get plenty of practice and most of them handle ditches pretty well.  Still, with plenty of video available on YouTube, there are plenty of examples of faulty execution.

The following description of negotiating a ditch is pretty detailed and pretty amazing.  It's from the same book by Self mentioned above.

And then we came to the first ditch.  Peg Watt's admonitions rang in my ears:  "Never look down!"  But I couldn't resist a peek when my turn came to jump.  I found myself balanced on the muddy edge of a bottomless pit.  Three feet below me was a little shelf less than two feet square.  To my amazement, Fergus gathered his feet under him and slid down to this little shelf; then, with a mighty spring, he sailed in an arc, landing perceptibly later on another little shelf, of the same dimensions and equally muddy, on the far side of the pit.  Another spring, shoes pulling out of the mud with a squelching, sucking noise, brought us to the top again, and we were off.  I had successfully maneuvered my first Ward Union ditch -- or, rather, Fergus had; I had nothing to do with it.

The wear and tear on that "little shelf" may explain why you see the faulty execution in the videos.  Or it may be that, like everything else, some horses are simply more careful and/or athletic than others.