Bits & Pieces of a relationship | Willingness

Follow Jesse in a ride with his 4yo filly Snippa. The explained exercises are great to follow when you have a new horse, a young unexperienced horse, a hot horse or a fresh horse. Jesse shows how to do his little safety checks and prepare for the ride.

Watch the video tutorial here.

The things I look for to make sure I am safe and my horse is ready.

Groundwork
I like to start with a simple in hand exercise on the ground with a halter and lead rope.  When I ask her to step off, I am looking for her shoulders to move away from me and lead the rest of her body. As the shape goes into her body in the arc of the circle, I then can pick up the lead rope and have her hip step away and her shoulders are ready to flow in the other direction. As I repeat this exercise, I am paying attention to her body language and look for signs of relaxation and willingness. This can be moving freely, not ringing her tail, moving softly off pressure, not pulling on me and I can see in her eye that she is calm. She is not worried.

 Once this is going well, I may turn up the heat a little and try to get a bit more life out of her. Adding pressure will give you a good opportunity to observe her reaction safely from the ground. As you are doing this notice if your horse is staying soft and continues to allow you to move the different body parts, head, shoulder, hip and ribs.  Again, we are looking for willingness to move calmly while being directed.

 If she ends up pulling on me, I won’t pull back. I will make sure my hand act like a wall to alert her so she can learn where the boundary is. When I bring her to a stop, I walk up to her and rub her. You can never give them too much reward for doing the right thing.

 The next thing I do is check by bending. I will run the lead rope over her head, across her body on the opposite side of me and around her hind legs. I will add light pressure to the rope and wait for her head and neck to bend off that pressure. Then the hip will come across and the shoulders will come through to me. In other words, she will tip her head to her hind quarters and turn away from me following the pressure of the lead rope. This shows me her body is relaxed and free to me.  I repeat this exercise on both sides until I feel she is moving smoothly and willingly. If she does not respond instantly I won’t start pulling on her, I will wait for her and cluck at her to get her feet moving and I am patient.

Bridling
When I am confident that she is in a good mindset and her body is willing and free, I will take the halter off and bridle her. While doing so I ask her head to tip in towards me and remain soft and relaxed. 

Before I go to mount her I will bend head and neck, see if I can lift the rein and get the hip to move. I do this on both sides. 

Lift the hip, ask the shoulder
Once I am in the saddle, I will ask her to step the shoulders across and check her willingness to move off a light touch. I ask this in little steps and do not ask her to walk off in a straight line just yet. The next thing is to lift my rein to move the hip and check to see if I can get the hip to move while maintaining a forward motion. Then I let her step off and after a few strides I will combine the two exercises. First ask the hip to step across to the outside and then ask the shoulders to flow to the inside.  Repeat on both sides, checking for any stiffness or braces in their body.

Moving out
I don’t exaggerate the movement in my body but I will always create a void for the horse to move into. So, there is pressure on one side and the void on the other side for the horse to move into but it is never exaggerated. As the horse gets more advanced I will ask less bending to get the moves. I hope this has been helpful for people looking for a little training tutorial on how to check a horse out and move them around before heading out to ride.

For the full video you can check out our Youtube channel
https://youtu.be/a7ZbyUrUDgY