Basic Horse Training

Video Transcript

"We're ready to take this young horse and put her to some task. We're going to start by going back to the very basics. When I have a horse that I'm not certain of what their background has, I'm going to check off every piece of the list until I figure out where it is that they may have stopped in her previous training. We know we've got a safe horse for this rider to ride, but just certainly not very well trained. So we're going to go straight on the straight lines, round through the corners, basic. We're going to make sure that we stay very relaxed in our seat and our leg with this young horse. She's a cow bred horse. She can go anywhere, speed or working cows, but she may have that tendency to become skittish and jittery. As all horses, we want them to maintain that very focused, relaxed mind set as we take her to learn more things. We're going to make sure that our foot just rests lightly in the stirrup rather than bracing against this horse's movement. When a fast, quick or untrained horse feels a rider bracing against a movement, not relaxing deep in their seat, this horse may become skittish and start to jig. We've already seen this horse kind of relax as our rider gets a little bit more relaxed. Now we're ready to take her into that next pattern which would be just a nice, round circle, keeping our reins at a soft and quiet length. We're not really expecting this horse to collect yet, we're just wanting her to what we call move forward off of our leg. Our rider is trained enough that she does know the different pressures that we're going to apply today. But we're going to probably see this horse start to create some challenges, just like the many that you may meet if you go out and buy that first horse and encounter one that just isn't as well trained, which most horses coming out of the backyards are not very well trained. And a lot of new riders come to this challenge where they have to become that experienced trainer before they might have thought that they were ready. We're going to try to find those pieces that'll help you when you encounter those problems."