hi it's josie and today i'm going to show you how i lunge my horses now there are a
few reasons i lunge my horses one of them is if i take a young horse somewhere new and it has
it's it's looking everywhere but where it should be i will use the the lunge work to get the
horse to focus back on me another reason i do it particularly with young horses is so they can find
their balance on a circle without my added weight to them i also will use it to visually assess a
horse how they're moving what they're doing helps me a lot from the ground to see what's going on
and then the main one i hear people say that they lunge their horse for
is to actually get rid of excess energy and that is all well and good but please do not let your
horse run around madly on the end of the lunge you should be training your horse while you're with it
which means if like say rebel took off and started to do some silly antics i
would actually try and do a transition bring the circle in smaller i would do something to
try and stop him he can get rid of his excess energy but he's not allowed to run around madly
so that's today's video is just showing you how i go about doing it and if you stay till the end
i will have two little tips for you just to do with your tack and an easy way to look after
your tack while you're lunging all right the other piece of equipment that i use and i actually have
had this for about 12 years i think and i wouldn't use anything else to lunge my horse is a seretta
so it has a firm solid piece of metal there which is not supposed to sit tight clamped on the
horse's nose but it does sit on there and a ring you can get three ring i've got a one ring one
now another little tip i've got here for you is this cost me a lot of money at the time i thought
it was a hundred and eighty dollars i think around about and that was about um or 15 years ago so
this sarita has cost me about 12 a year so buy something of quality and it certainly lasts but
i use this because i don't like attaching my lunge bit to lunge clip sorry to the bit i don't like to
pull my horse's mouth around if i don't have to i do long rein from the bit so i do do work from the
bit but particularly a young and unbalanced horse i don't want to pull his mouth around i want him
to be happy with the bit and have a nice quiet mouth so i'll just pop the seretta on and then
we'll go from there okay so i've put my serreta on my nose piece is not clamping over his nose i
can pop fingers underneath there there is a bit of room under there it has straps up here which
actually hold this bit away from coming it's got dirt on it away from coming and hitting him in
the eye so that's an important part of it as well the other thing you need is obviously a lunge rein
and you need a lunge whip i don't use side reins on my particularly my young horses because horses
use their head and neck to balance and i feel that it's a little bit like if i strapped your
hands to your side and told you to walk along a thin wall you actually use your arms for balance
a horse a particularly a young horse uses their head and neck to balance themselves i will use
side reins for a specific issue and that's usually if i have trouble with a horse over bending
and falling out through a shoulder but they're always put on very loosely let's get on with it
just turn this way rebel i'm going to very quickly run you through a very basic bit of horsemanship
here horses have a driveline sits about where the girth sits it's about here in front of that
you will stop your horse behind it is a driving position for your horse and on it will often just
keep the horse going at the same tempo and i'll show you that in a minute when i'm lunging here
that's enough chat let's get on now i was always taught to keep my lunge rein so it's not
it's a nice straight line to my hand which is what you do with your reins as well
how i hold the lunge rein if wayne can just zoom in on my left hand here is exactly
the way i hold a rein on a horse the proper textbook way is to hold it like that
i have no feel like that i have much more feel the way i used to the way i hold a rein so i hold
it between my little finger and my ring finger and i can give rebel information through that
your lunge rein should not be dragging on the ground
because if it is your horse isn't you haven't got any communication with your horse
even though it's got a loop in it like that i can feel him i can pull on that see and
he will turn his head this way and turn if i want him to turn out i move my whip
towards his shoulder and there he went out oops and i've tied my whip in a little knot here
i start i'm sitting right on his driveline here so i'm literally sitting on where the
girth is if i would think about where my belly button was pointing energy
it's sort of at that if i'm facing dead on it's at his girth if i want him to go forward can you
see i swivel my hips you should always send your energy in the direction you want your horse to go
so once your horse has done some walking and he's warming up you can send him up into the trot
and you should do that by lifting your energy which i did then by picking my belly button up
and asking him i didn't even have to use the words and and use the whip which is really just a tool
now i want you to note that i do something that i'm sure a lot of people don't i walk on a circle
with my horse why do i do that well i need to use my whip at times to actually perhaps make him pick
his whoa pick his inside hind leg up a little bit quicker i might want him to do something i
might want the shoulder to go out i need to be able to reach him with the whip and it's not to
belt him guys in any stretch it is actually um to use it as a tool and if i'm standing at the
end of this lunge rein this doesn't reach him so i am quite happy to walk on a circle with him
and so let's do a t-r-o-t transition i'm going to pick my belly button up
send my energy out and ask rebel to trot good boy
so you can see here that he goes to stretch regularly he probably could do with a little
more energy so i am going to walk a little bit more purposefully with my feet as well good the
other reason i like to be on a smaller circle is i can do some work with him
now i'm talking to him with my right hand on the lung rein asking him to do a smaller circle
he's not really warmed up properly for this but good boy
and let's go
good can get him to lengthen stride if i take a longer stride i can take a shorter stride i can
good boy
and after this circle we'll do a longer stride just watch what
happens now i'm going to send my energy out lengthen my step good boy
all i did there was breathed out dropped my energy dropped my core down rebel walked and
walk now i use the word and before everything i do it's basically working as a half halt teaching
the horse that something's coming one of my very pet hates is people who don't train their horses
to walk on the lunge every horse should be able to walk on the lunge it's actually not that difficult
to teach them sometimes you might need to have the patience of a saint to teach it but there's never
been a horse yet that i can't teach to walk like this on the lunge ready and trot trot good boy
now we might just do a canter and i always use an open for rebel an open side here and
canter yep good boy canter yeah okay he just got told to canter
i asked him i gave him a second chance i told him and trot and trot good boy so i'm going
to do repeat that transition because that wasn't a good transition and canter yes yes
and trot ready and canter a good boy and trot and trot good boy and canter good
and trot so i just did quicker transitions there
repetition is the mildest form of punishment for a horse trust me and walk and wal and rest is a
reward and whoa my horses all stop from a upward hand it's just the way i teach them
and do i care if they spin and face me no i don't because i don't have
side reins on sometimes with side reins on that's difficult
tip number one what do you do with your reins this was taught to me by one of my coaches and
it was the best thing since sliced bread i thought so your reins go over your horse's
neck sit up somewhere close like that so the first thing you do undo your throat lash
then you grab your outside rein and you bring it over the top rebel can you please keep looking
forward so they can see over the top you grab this one that is now the outside bring it forward that
one outside bring it forward that's the outside so you're basically rolling one around the other
when it's nice and firm you have a little hole there you take the throat lash and put it in
the hole not under both because they will unravel comes through the hole and you just do your throat
lash up that way while you're lunging your reins will stay nice and safe what about your stirrups
okay so how we do the stirrup leathers is i roll my stirrup push my stirrup right up i take
my leather i wrap it around the front and it goes through that hole see that hole there goes through
there and i pull it then i thread it around again and it goes back through that hole that is there
and then i've got the loop that's in here and i grab this bit of the strap and i fold it
down through that and then my stirrup is nice and secure and doesn't flap against my saddle
anyway that is just a very quick look at how i actually lunge my horses rebel
wasn't doing much work there because i was just trying to keep it pretty
slow and steady so you could see what was going on hope that helped thanks for watching