Minimizing a Break in Gait: Horse Training Tips

Video Transcript

"Often with a young horse, the rider is ready to move that horse forward and start to lope and we have this picture of how want to have it if we want it to be polished and correct and very nice on the correct lead. All those pieces together but the typical younger horse or one that comes less trained is going to have lot of issues with staying forward or what we call breaking gait. Breaking gait is one of the biggest offenses that a horse can present to the rider and a big challenge in how do we train to minimize the amount of breaking gait. If this horse is going along at the lope and suddenly she starts to jog and the rider feels disorganized and sloppy in that, it's going to hard for the rider to know in that split second what exactly should I do. So the rider goes into the jog it feels a little bit sloppy but it's very important and you can see our little horse starting to buck and challenge this rider. The biggest thing to do is just stay committed and push this horse right back through and into the lope. This horse could go on to present a horrible problem. A horse that learns to what we call suck back and break gait can take piece of where they've won the battle and turn it into a real big problem where the rider is going to be more challenged then their ready for. A rider of this capability can easily push this horse through taking away that opportunity for the horse to win and put the reins back in the hands of the rider. So we've pushed this horse nicely through those little bit of the little balk I call it a little temper tantrum, we've got our mind back on forward and the rider and horse have gone back to what we like to see. A little bit of harmony a nice continuous lope staying very steady in it's right and rhythm. If this horse should break gait again, the rider better be committed and very prepared to make sure that they can ride whatever the horse presents without getting too anxious themselves. So we've watched this rider put this horse through very nicely. The conditions that we have to have in order to fix a break in gait on a younger horse."