Your horse will act as the slinky as you perform a series of turn on the haunches, turn on the forehand manoeuvres all the way down a fence line or wall.
Training
Do you often feel your horse could benefit from developing more strength in one area of the body? Here are eight strengthening exercises for horses.
It is so exciting to see that science-backed, positive reinforcement clicker training is catching on in the horse world. This type of training has been popular in the dog training world for a while and in zoos too, where the …
In part one of this series, in the September/October issue, you learned that by lunging your horse using the correct alignment, pushing the right buttons and using the right amount of energy, you’re speaking to him in a way that …
Flying changes are just that – a leap. But not so much a leap of the feet, as a leap of the mind. Your horse may be solid with his leads, never missing a lead cue. Nevertheless, as you now …
Your horse spooks at the plastic bag in the barn aisle…unless it has his treats in it. He doesn’t want to go past a driveway where someone has put out a garbage can. He has suddenly started to avoid going …
The exercise ‘Release to a Jump’ encourages your horse to engage physically and mentally in a free jumping challenge. Even if you don’t plan on jumping your horse, this exercise is a valuable tool that helps with good horsemanship, and …
Lunging is a valuable training tool that every horse person should be able to do well. It’s also something horse people often don’t agree on. There are those who believe that:
- free lunging is a better option than using a
Wrong lead!” The coach calls out and the rider deflates. Fast forward a year down the road to see the same rider initiating the wrong lead…on purpose. Why? She’s discovered the counter canter as an essential tool in building a …
Are you having difficulty developing shoulder control, circles and consistent impulsion? The “Daisy Pattern” is a great exercise to help with these issues because it involves many turns, which encourage the shoulders to do most of the work, creating better …
Leading a large, anxious, excitable flight animal that outweighs you by 800-1,000 pounds can be a nerve rattling situation and it can also become dangerous.
A correct spin is essentially a horse walking his forehand around his haunches – body parts aligned fairly straight and a slight bend.
An exercise I like to use to for improving focus, straightness and rating speed is called Post to Post. Compared to some of the other exercises in this series, it may seem fairly simple. It offers many benefits for both …
Barging behaviour is sometimes about space – whoever owns the space and can move another horse out of that space determines the herd hierarchy.
To shift your horse closer to a gate, along a pole or away from the horse giving off bad vibes beside you in the class line-up, you’ll need to teach him to side pass.
What’s a side pass?
Most equine …
