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- Hey guys, it's a beautiful day here in Ohio.
And today I'm going to be sharing with you
how to work with a spooky horse.
So, if you've ever been riding along
and having a wonderful ride and all of a sudden
your horse spooks seemingly out of nowhere,
you know how this can be such a frustrating
and potentially scary situation.
So today I'm going to be talking about
why your horse may be spooking,
What are some things you can do
to help get their attention on you?
And then lastly, we're going to talk about
how to ride a spooky horse.
So let's get started.
You're with Scarlet.
And you saw Scarlet at the beginning of this video spooking.
So I'm going to be taking her through an exercise
to help her out with this today.
If you have a horse that is spooking,
let's first talk about,
what are some reasons why they are doing this?
You might be having a horse that's going
into a new environment for the first time,
and that can often cause some anxiety
or have a horse spook a little bit more,
if they're seeing things they've never seen before.
Or, you could have a young horse
that's just lacking experience.
Or you might have a horse like Scarlet
who has a learned behavior of spooking.
Whatever the reason,
it's important to recognize
that a horse that's spooking,
their focus is not on you.
It's on the environment and they're not, you know,
in a relaxed confident state.
So we want to be doing exercises
that help improve their relaxation and their focus on us.
So here's a few exercises that I like to do
with horses that are a little bit spooky or nervous.
The first exercise I like to do is
working my horse on the ground.
This helps me to build a connection with them
and really get to know them better,
and for them to get to know me better
before moving to under saddle.
There's many different groundwork exercises
you can do with your horse.
Here, I'm side passing my horse.
And I love doing this work because it really helps me to
build a strong relationship.
Desensitizing is another exercise that I like to do,
which increases my horses confidence and relaxation,
by simulating a pressured situation.
Stretching while changing directions
is a great way to improve your horses relaxation.
Getting a horse to stretch down helps them
to become softer over their back and more relaxed.
Transitions are a great way to enhance
your horses' focus and responsiveness.
Here I'm doing simple walk to trot transitions.
Each time Scarlet goes up,
she's having to think more about me
and bring her attention back to me.
So we've talked about some things that we can do
to help our horses get more focused and relaxed.
Now let's talk about riding our horse
in the instance of a spook.
How do we ride through a spook
and help to stay safer with our horses?
So it's important to recognize that any horse can spook,
regardless of how quiet they are.
Horses have a natural flight response
when they see something that scares them.
So it's important for us as the rider,
to be able to support the horse
and work them appropriately
in the instance where they do spook.
So I've got an exercise set up out here
that I'm going to be walking Scarlet through.
And I'm going to walk you through the steps
of how I ride her in this exercise.
Our horses can feel our tension.
When we're riding them
and they get a little bit nervous,
it's important that we relax
and make sure we're really breathing deeply
to help us relax.
We also want to be sitting into that saddle,
relaxing into it,
and hugging our horse with our legs,
riding out to our hands,
to nice giving hands,
and encouraging the horse to be forward.
So here's Scarlet walked in nice and confident.
As we approach a scary object,
we want to be instilling confidence into our horse.
So you notice that I'm being nice and patient.
I'm rewarding Scarlet.
When she starts to approach that obstacle.
And I'm not chasing her or kicking her.
I'm letting her investigate it
and move up to it a little at a time.
I'm keeping my legs on to encourage her to go forward here.
(soft music plays)
Curiosity leads to confidence.
So you can see as Scarlet checks out these cowboy curtains
and starts to investigate it a little bit,
she gets more confident with it
and is more willing to walk through it.
So right here,
you can see her build up her courage
and walk through it nicely.
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After going through it a few times,
Scarlet got to this place where she could walk
through the cowboy curtain with no hesitation.
Once she got to this place,
I went ahead and brought her up to the track.
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It's not always what you think.
Sometimes the obstacle that you think
is not going to be a big deal,
is the one that's the scariest for your horse.
Scarlet was more concerned about this little tarp
on the ground than the cowboy curtain,
but I'm handling it the same way.
Keeping my legs on sitting back
and encouraging her forward.
Here she goes over a little bit quick.
So I bend her back around
and we're going to just go over it again.
So I always want to end on a good note
and make sure that I'm instilling
that confidence in my horse.
Here I'm going to give her the reins,
keep my legs on,
let her check out the tarp,
and then redirect her to walk over it.
Good girl.
So Scarlet did an awesome job today working with me.
It's a really windy day out here
and she was so brave going
through these obstacles, really proud of her.
If you have a horse like Scarlet
that has a lot of worry and tends to be a spooker,
the more that you can expand your knowledge,
put them in different environments
and expose them to different things,
the more confident they're going to become.
And the more that you, you know,
take the time to work with them in a quiet environment,
to get their focus on you,
the more successful you're going to be as a team.
So I hope these tips were a help to you.
I hope you have a wonderful week
and I'll see you in the next video.
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