hi it's josie and i've had a few questions lately emails from you guys and messages on
um instagram facebook and below in the comments of my videos wondering if i could do something on
there was like how to deal with a spooking horse and how to deal with a hot horse and
they basically are all the same type of issue and the same type of foundation helps with those it's
very hard to give you a five minute video on how to deal with a spooking horse because it depends
it's one of those it depends it depends on why it's spooking have you done your foundations
right go back and check your foundation training on your horse but what i will give you today
is what i do when i get on a green or a young horse and it's either hot or spooky unfortunately
i don't have either underneath me today but that doesn't matter i can show you what i do do
you need to be a rider who feels what your horse does underneath you because
part of the biggest part of this is actually preempting it feeling it about to come and then
doing something so let's just get spider off over here and see if i can show you what i would do
so you would have probably heard if you're in the dressage world that if your horse is going to
spook at something perhaps on the long side you should put him into shoulder fore shoulder in to
go past it does that work absolutely it works and do i use it yes i do spider often on a windy day
will be spooky here to this day past this stuff so i will ride that short side in a little bit
of shoulder fore shoulder in but what about if i was coming down here and i can feel him about to
spook at something here what i would do same thing i could put him into shoulder fore shoulder in
but why does that work i believe it works because what you've done is you've taken the horse's focus
and you've refocused it back on yourself so spider i'm just going to walk here spider
might be walking down here and something here is about to spook him i can feel it because when
you've ridden your own horses for a long time you do learn to feel what happens in their body
they give themselves away there's no two ways about it that's number one and number
two horses will often do the same thing in the same place regularly it just is the way it is
so i wait until i feel his body about to to well he's warning me that he's about to do something
and then when you put him into shoulder fore or shoulder in you've given him a job to do that's
taken his focus off the spot that he was going to spook at but what if you can't do shoulder
in or shoulder fore what if you're not that far along in your training and you're riding a horse
and he's going to spook easy done so if i was riding down this long side here i'm going to do
it at the middle letter and as i came up towards this middle letter i started to feel spider
warning me that he's going to do something i would just go okay we're going this way
and if i was riding here towards b and he was going to spook and go okay we're going this way
i got taught this by a bushman i did some clinics with a bushman and i really enjoyed
them and his name was ken may he's an australian gentleman and he would say
change of attitude change of direction and i've always remembered that on my young horses
so attitude means he's about to be spooky let's change direction if i'm riding a young
horse along and i can feel that he's going to be i'm going to use the word naughty i hate it
because it's not really what horses are but i'm going to use the word naughty because you guys
may understand that so you can feel that he's going to he's going to get to here and
he's going to go ah i'm not going that way change of direction change of attitude i've
chosen the change of direction it's changed his attitude the other thing you can do
is a down transition why taking his focus from wherever it was and we've done the
down transition and doesn't need to be to halt it could be from walk to trot from canter to trot
it could be from walk from trot to walk can be up or down transition
you just need to do something to change your horse's focus so he's not focused
on what he's about to spook at he comes back to you the one thing i want to tell you not to do and
i have actually seen this done is if your horse spooks people get crossed with their horse and
they may hit their horse now i'm going to give you an analogy to think about with that let's just say
that you are walking down the hallway and someone jumps out of a room and goes boo and you go oh my
god that's okay but then someone behind you gives you a clip in the ear and says don't do that
you come to the next doorway and someone goes boo and you jump and someone clips you in the ear
and then you're walking down the hallway a bit further and then a noise and you go oh my gosh
and someone clips you under the ear what's that going to do as far as i'm concerned that's not
only going to set you up to spook it everything that's going to turn you into an anxious person
oh my god oh my god oh my god you're waiting to be clipped hit that's the other word for it um
horses spook it's a natural reflex for them they're a flight animal they're a prey animal
so when something that's the way nature has made them evolve for them to survive they cannot help
it it is just a reflex it's like if i push you over and you put your arm out to stop yourself
from falling what if i kept telling you not to put your arm out to stop from falling you can't
do it it's a reflex and it would be unfair of me to be cross with you every time you did that
when my horses spook i try to ride on i usually will change i'll do a change of direction change
of attitude and try to keep the horse going forward these are general rules you need to
to read your horse yourself but yeah you'll see if you didn't watch last week's video go and
watch it because spi um rebel sorry spooked at a tractor that came up just popped up over the
top of that hill and it scared him you'll actually see me do a change of direction because he was um
going to go for i just bent him around and then then kept walking and then we got on
with the lesson as if nothing had happened i hope you guys found that useful let me
know in the comments i love hearing from you in the comments thanks for watching