SHANNON DUECK: Hi, I'm Team SmartPak rider,
Shannon Dueck.
Today's Ask a Trainer question comes from Linda
who's asking about mounting and dismounting and how
to retrain or train a horse to stand quietly
so it's not a dangerous time.
Because we're halfway on and off a horse mid
mount or mid dismount,
we really do need to take training to stand through
this as seriously as any other training that we're
gonna do with our horses.
So this is the lovely five year old Angelica.
And she's never — this is not retraining,
thank goodness because she's always
learned how to be a good girl.
But you can see how careful I am and this is how
I would start with a green horse.
Always with an assistant and if I'm retraining,
I would have an assistant there until I started
to feel very confident about the horse being able to stand.
You have to have an assistant who's calm and quiet and stands
on the off side of the horse so that they can help keep
the horse square and straight for you as you're
working through this. The assistant needs sugar.
Sierra gives the horse sugar.
Always I give sugar when the horse
is successful in standing for me to mount
and then I make the horse wait until I use
my leg and walk off like that.
So I really want to teach good habits right
from the beginning but for retraining that might
take quite a while, still be using the assistant.
This is the next step forward.
Sierra is still in the background there
and I'm giving her another sugar so that when the horse
comes up to the mounting block and stands for me,
she can then come forward and reward the horse.
So here I line the horse up to the mounting block.
And if she stands quietly there —
if she wasn't standing quietly there I wouldn't
go to the next step. She stands quietly there for me.
Sierra comes up and is holding the horse quietly,
again on the off side so that if the horse moves
she can move her back towards me.
I take up my outside rein, my right rein,
a little bit tighter again because if the horse moves
she'll move in towards me instead of away
from me with the rein that tight the outside rein tight.
I make her wait.
She got a sugar and then I put the leg on.
Every day I do this and I still do this every
day with every one of my horses.
They have to be patient when I get on.
Here is me at the next step where I am training my horses
to park at the mounting block.
So I like to bring them up to the mounting block,
and then I stand up and if they don't if they're
not quiet there then I just wait till they're quiet there.
Now with patience I use the whip just to touch
her to move forward into the right parking spot.
My left hand is forward letting her go.
Now it comes back and says wait. And there she waits.
Now she's waiting for me so I take the whip
out of the way.
I shorten up my outside rain so that if she moves
she'll move into me and mount.
You don't want to spend very much time in the air.
So I mount fairly quickly without launching
myself on the horse. And the sugar. Always the sugar.
It really does make a difference.
The horse starts to look forward to me getting on.
So there she is enjoying your sugar.
I make her wait until my leg goes on and we move off.
This one is a bit of a fail.
It happens to everybody and believe me in training
this mare how to park,
we've had a number of fails but when we have
the fail it's no big deal. I just start again.
Just as important as mounting, the dismount is super important.
You drop your stirrups — both of them and vault off.
You do not want to keep one of your feet in the stirrups.
If your horse leaves or spooks when you've got one
foot in the stirrup getting off, that's a really dangerous time,
you could get dragged. So again there you go.
I vaulted off we call it vaulting off,
it is by far the safest way to get off your horse.
And then yeah she's kind of spoiled.
She gets another sugar. So I hope this helps.
Everybody's gonna be so much happier and safer
if your horses can stand for you.
Take your time with the training it's worth
the extra time you spend.