jog drill and hot horses

Ive finally been feeling that jog drill that John Irish taught in his clinic. It is written about here and this is a really good article to read over again from time to time.

I am riding a colt by Docs Nighthawk that is pretty talented but he also has a big motor. Whenever I'm riding a pretty hot one I usually have to relearn that just jumping out and loping them down only makes them hotter.

I have better luck when I spend a little time walking some circles or moving body parts around a little while and then playing with turn around. Doing lots of repetition and going from side to side and then rewarding the horse by quitting the turn when he is correct and then doing the same thing on the other side or working on the same side if he anticipates changing directions too much- After I've done enough of this to get the horse moving his feet and building his desire to turn he starts to relax and then when I go to loping he is quiet and not wanting to run off too much.

I have preety good luck pulling hot horses into the ground or just stoping them and rolling back easy to the other direction but lately I have been breaking down to the trot and doing the trot drill I didnt really quite get the drill at first when John Irish was helping us with it at the clinic. But I came about it by accident when working on this hot Docs Nighthawk horse.

It started when he started sucking to a horse I had tied to a juniper tree in the arena. Since he wanted to pull in that direction I took him over there and trotted and loaped him in little circles and drove him hard with my legs and also spun him quite a bit and worked him pretty hard then took him to the opposite end of the arena to rest. He wanted to loap slow after that. It worked so well I started doing it in other parts of the arena and started driving the horse up in the bridle more and really slapping him with my legs- wasnt wearing spurs for this horse- Any way it made him kind of relax and slapping with the legs while holding firm with my hands made him bridle up and I noticed he went into this nice little jog. So instead of pulling him into the grownd when he got wound up I slowed him to the jog and did the little jog drill at a circle and it seemes to make him want to lope slow and correct. Pulling him into the ground on occasion is still effective. I also break him off to the side sometimes to do this if he is sticking out in the shoulder.

Also in guiding I'm working more on the side that sticks out and less on trying to pick up the shoulder that drops. Instead of picking up the shoulder Icounter canter some and consentrate on steering out and straight and not fighting the shoulder by guiding into the circle and keeping the shoulder up which kind of contradicts itslef because it means stearing into the direction of the shoulder your trying to keep up- which doesnt seem to work.

Also shaking the reing gets the horse to come off better than wrestiling with it.

Some good quotes

Some excellent quotes.