October 19th a productive day

A nice mare was sent to me recently. For almost a couple of months I have been messing with her now. She has been through a couple trainers and one of those guys had some lead change issues with her. She is good leaded- but if you counter canter her, or, at first, tried to move her hip she would panic. This bled through to all of her training- so, if she got in a pickle, she would rear. Not over backwards. She would just stop and hop, hop, hop. Or rear and lunge forward and try to run off. So if you prepared to ask for a lead change - or any kind of change she would stick her head in the air trot a few steps and swap to the other lead. Nice. I have pushed, pulled, bent, kicked, and done all my usual softening efforts, including bitting her up, driving her, putting the string ie. shambone style. She was the kind that if you stop and try to roll back, she could just not do it and if you tried to make it happen that front end was so bracey she would default into rearing mode which didnt mean she would necessarily rear but she was thinking about it. Appearantly to get out of anything she didnt want to do she would rear and she was good at it.

Sadly, what finally got through to her was doing the things I was doing but I had to get harsh with my hands. When I bumped her face down, I BUMPED it down hard- its the only thing she understands.

So when your training a horse- here is what not to do. If your horse is having lead change issues- do not spur it and jerk on its face while you are galloping forward- stop the horse, soften the resistance- move the hip, shoulder, soften the face, sidepass and then start all over again. Dont fight with them going forward at a gallop- its easy to get baited into - I did that Tuesday with Wades 4 year old who is pretty broke but he pulls on my hands changing leads to the right. It just makes him scared and apprehensive to do very much going forward. His changes got worse, when they had been improving.

So on Wednesday, that productive day, after bitting him up straight on for a while I cooled it on the forward galloping when he anticipated or got stiff or chargy or buzzed, and stopped, softened his face- or pulled him off to the side, moved his shoulder, moved his hip, softened his chin and started over- any time he pulled on me, before, after, during a lead change I would stop and remind him and back him off and soften that chin at a standstill or evern walk driving him forward and softening that chin- made a huge difference in his lead changes and attitude.

Another sidenote is get your horse broke to death before trying to do a lot of formal lead changes on him- if he's not to natural leaded- flying change wize, teach him to guide, do good lead departures, sidepass, two track, turn on the forhand, roll back, back in circles, be collected and MOVE HIS FEET! with no resistance. Then you might start messing with the flying lead change.

Another thing that worked on both of these horses when they wanted to stiffen their chin in the turn around was to used direct rein and OUTSIDE leg pressure until they yielded their chin to the bit and became soft. As opposed to using the outside rein so much. So your teaching them to give the inside chin with the outside leg- takes some effort but gets them even more broke.