Horse Riding Signals

Video Transcript

"We're going to discuss rider position and a horses call it disposition or outlook on their training session. Our young horse here, is starting to get a bit jiggy, and at times even in fact, sort of hop on us. The rider gets a bit nervous, and starts to feel like they're a bit at risk. Absolutely. You just maybe, and we're trying to decide how far can a rider go? But let's talk about, and we'll ask this rider to stop here for a moment. I'd like to address the fact that we have a higher energy horse, lots of us choose those, and want to know how to go about training that higher energy animal. This horse wants to paw and stand restlessly. The horse is programmed to move away from pressure, and to respond to the release of pressure. We've covered that, and it makes a lot of sense when we're trying to move that horse one direction or another. But what I find with a lot of my new riders, when they reach this point where their higher energy horse is starting to create this energy that's unpredictable. We need to asses what is the rider telling the horse through their leg? I'm going to ask my rider to really relax, to put the foot less in the stirrup, let's pull that foot out. Let's imagine that my fingers are underneath this rider's foot, and she's not allowed to crush them. She's going to try relax through her whole leg, not putting that pressure forward that braces. Because when this horse, who's very sensitive feels that rider start to brace, she's going to respond as though she's asking. What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? Because to her, any kind of pressure, any kind of tension is telling her to do something, and she's waiting for the release. So as my rider gets a little bit more comfortable, she relaxes, takes a few nice, deep breaths, this horse is not being a bad horse, just a bit higher energy. Now we're going to ask her to move forward and try to get her back on that correct forward path. But we need to take a minute and examine, is it us asking the horse to do more, when we in fact think we're asking the horse to do less. It's a nice skill when you can jump on any horse, high energy, low energy, and immediately read their disposition. The more active my horse is, the less active I'm going to be. I do need to be able to rely on my seat and my balance so that I'm not at risk when this horse starts to dance and jig underneath me. We've decided this isn't a dangerous horse, it's just one that's going to require a much more advanced and skillful rider, if we're going to bring this together in a safe fashion."