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hello everyone so today we are talking about respect and i'm going to show you a few signs that
your horse is not respectful of you and then also give you some tips for what you can do about it so
as much as we love our horses they are very big and they can hurt us and so it's really important
that they are respectful of us and of what we ask them and of our space so that we don't end
up getting hurt. So if you are excited for this video give me a thumbs up if you think your horse
respects you let me know in the comments and also check out the description i have a free
mini course on confidence so if you're struggling with confidence be sure to check that out. So this
is kensington and he's actually a very respectful horse so we'll see how he does with this but i'm
just going to go through a few things that you can do to test out whether your horse is respectful of
you or not. So one of the first things is you know just when you're on the ground with your
horse when you're grooming your horse is there's a few things that you can do to test whether or
not they're respectful. The first thing is that when you're moving from side to side and grooming
your horse i'm gonna pick up my curry comb here um but like if i step down the side of him and
i'm gonna start grooming him to on the left side i want him to move over to the other side of the
crossties so what i'm going to do is i'm going to step down here i'm going to kind of put a little
pressure just with my fingers where my leg would be and you see him move over to the right there
it's important when you do this to kind of tip your horse's head a little towards you
and then apply the pressure to get them to move over so let me show you that from the
other side a lot of times when your horse isn't respecting you you kind of go down the side
and you're like literally having to like whack them and whack them and they will not move over so
this is just a good test of respect is like "hey move over and make space for me" and then
once they've made space for you then you can start curring them and brushing them and you
know really loving on them because you do you know you want to cur you want to love on your
horse you want to bond with your horse but it has to be within this respect so just next time when
you're grooming your horse test this out if you can just ask them to move away from you good boy
in the cross ties and this is all about pressure and release so i put a little pressure i say move
over good boy when he moves over i release good boy good boy so that's the first thing now another
thing where i see is a big test of respect is when you ask your horse to pick up their foot and a lot
of times when your horse isn't respecting you i'll see people that they're like pinching and
shoving and like laying into the horse and the horse is not moving over not picking up their
foot so this is another place where you really want to teach your horse to give to pressure
what's really important is if you're gonna pick up your horse's foot like you can see
right now how he has all of his weight on his left front foot and he basically has no weight
on his right front foot you see how his right front foot is like kind of moving a little bit
so if i wanted to pick up his left front foot the first thing that i need to do is i need to
shift his weight to the right front foot and again this is about respect so if i put
pressure on him is that i need to be able to get him to shift his weight you see how he shifted his
weight to his right front and then picked up his left front momentarily so this again it's about
pressure and release there so i push him over to that right front and then when he when he picks
up his left front i release and so now he's in a position where if i were to slide down his leg
of course he has wraps on so you don't usually pick their feet when they have wraps on
but you slide down his leg give him a little pinch and then ask him to pick up his foot so
that's the second place that you can really test whether or not your horse is respecting you
and then another place that's really key is asking your horse to put their head down and
this is a big test of respect and also submission because horses when they're afraid or when they're
distracted they put their heads straight up in the air so that they can see more it like opens
up their field of vision when they put their head down they have to really trust you and they can't
like look around as much so one thing that i do every time when i catch my horses when i go
to put the bridle on my horses is i ask them to drop that head down and the best way to do this
is you're gonna put one hand on your horse's poll on the top between their ears this is the
pole and then another hand on the front of your halter and you're just gonna apply a little bit of
pressure and ask that horse to slowly drop their head so you see how every time i put pressure
his head drops i put a little pressure again his head drops down so this is really i think
one of the biggest signs that your horse is respecting you and your horse is trusting you
good boy and if you're having trouble with this like if you can't get your horse to put their head
down then you sometimes what you can do is you can like if you're putting pressure and they won't
put their head down put go a little side to side like this and keep applying the downward pressure
and again it's all about pressure and release so teaching respect is about
applying a pressure and when you get what you want release so it's about pressure release
that's going to put his head up again so pressure release pressure release pressure release good boy
good boy so one final let me get my rope falter stay there
good boy
so one final thing about teaching or horse respect is that it starts on the ground and
it carries over to under saddle so if you feel like your horse isn't respecting you under saddle
i would really recommend starting getting your horse more respectful of you on the ground this is
a rope halter and whenever i'm doing groundwork or working my horse on the ground i like to use the
rope halter because it's much more effective than one of these thick web halters because it's much
narrower and it also has these knots that go right on the pressure points of your horse's head so
i'm gonna put the rope halter on him and then
a couple of simple things that you can do to get your horse more respectful of
you on the ground we're gonna just go over here in the parking lot
come on buddy
okay so the first thing that is a big sign of respect is about your personal space
and i see a lot of times that horses are always like crowding into people's personal space pushing
on top of them pushing them away not only is this rude and disrespectful like if someone just like
came up and like shoved their head into your belly you would probably think that was really rude
so it's disrespectful but it's also unsafe because if your horse gets worried or nervous and they
come into your space or try to step on you then you could end up getting hurt so a really good
thing to practice on the ground is just seeing if you can like see how he came towards me there
is see if you can get your horse to move out of your space so what i did there is when you want
your horse to move out of your space you want to kind of make yourself bigger see how i lifted up
my hands and i sent energy towards him to get him away from me so no you stay back there so
notice how now there's more space between me and him and he should stay back there and maintain
that space until i ask him to come towards me so that's really important is that your horse needs
to feel okay back there they don't need to come on top of you all the time to kind of have that
sense of security so again if i step towards him and send that energy he should back away from me
like so so that's a big sign of respect and and that's very natural like when horses are in a
field together and the dominant horse comes up to the submissive horse and kind of even
just pins their ears a little the submissive horse moves away so you really want to have that respect
where your horse is thinking that you're the dominant horse you're a good boy and then like
it once your horses is respectful and submissive then of course go you know and pet your horse on
the face and reassure them a little bit and and you don't want them to be afraid of you
but you do want them to really be respectful of you good boy you're a good boy so another
place that you can work on this respect is by getting the hindquarters to move away from you
so what i'm going to do here is i'm just going to start by making a circle with him
and when I step towards his hind quarters I want his hind quarters to move away from me
so as i'm going here now as i step towards his hindquarters you see how his hindquarters are
moving away from me so i'm stepping towards him and he's moving away from me good boy good boy
and same thing the other way i'm going to start by just kind of leading him
in a circle around me notice how i'm i'm not backing away i'm stepping towards him
good boy and getting him to move away from me so i'm stepping towards him
getting him to move away from me good boy good boy and then i also with a rope halter i like to test
that I can get him to just softly put his head down and then give him a little scratch so I hope
that these tips have helped you to kind of assess whether or not your horse is respectful of you
and then to just give you some little simple things that you can do
in your day-to-day routine with your horse to get them more respectful because when your horse is
respectful of you it is so much nicer to be around them and it's also really important for safety
and also so that you have a good ride when your horse is respectful thanks so much for watching
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