Training a Horse to Back Up

Video Transcript

"We're encountering a horse that hasn't had all the training that we may have expected. And we're trying to find out how it is that we can still work with this project. We're going to ask this young horse to back, and we know that she likes to fidget and pop up. We're going to try to create the situation where we can improve on that and take this rider through the paces. Helping the rider to understand just how important it is that we recognize the patience required to work through some situations we encounter with these younger or less trained animals. Always keep your safety in mind, know your limitations. We know this horse well, she likes to pop up a little bit, but it doesn't go into a rear. So we're going to start to work with her quiet, and patient. Using the same basic techniques that we would ask any horse to back with. That is we're going to ask or introduce it with our hands quietly and then slowly wrap our leg, just enough, not enough to create any more anxiety. But just enough to put some energy to it. And we stay very patient, very relaxed, and there we go. So the big key here is with any situation that we come into with a horse, and now let her walk a circle Laura, just because you can see that this horse has a lot of anxiety related to backing. What ever brought her to that, perhaps it had some rough handed previous past, but whatever it was we don't want to just persistently push her to back up, knowing how anxious she is. We let her walk a circle, then we halt, in a quiet fashion, then we kind of reorganize to take up just a little bit of contact. Not too much to put her in a bottled up, and then start to use that. Introduce a few steps, then use our leg to ask her to back more quietly. You can see Laura's got a very quiet, patient disposition about this. We can see the horse starting to blend in, and give her the response that we would hope for. That's a great example of what could be a big problem. A lot of riders come to be me where they've already reached that point of frustration and anxiety, and honestly some have come with a battle already ensued. Any time you go to battle, any time you feel like you want to start that angry fight, I call it an arm wrestle with your horse. You know that we've probably missed a few steps in between. If you take the horse back to a quiet and patient, reorganize their thoughts, you can always win that battle. Because we should be, we should always be the smarter. And we know how to take it back a step, and not try to miss it because we want to go to that frustrated, angry fight."