(soft melodic music)
- If you have a horse you're going up to mount
and he's walking away like this,
it's going around the block,
you're feeling like you're having difficulty getting them
to line up, or maybe you're able to get them lined up,
and then you go to finally get on,
he moves his hip away like this, or you get in the saddle.
And as you're getting in the saddle,
he's walking off on you.
I'm going to be taking you through the steps
of how to solve these issues.
So, the exercise that I'm going to be teaching you today,
you can see right here with Crosby
is just teaching your horse to step up
to the block and line up.
Teaching him to kind of side pass over there to the block.
So, when we are teaching our horse out of side pass to us,
we want to start the process of teaching
using a halter and a line.
Eventually, we'll be doing this with a bridal,
but to teach it using the halter and line,
helps to keep us safe and gives the horse
a little bit more room so that he's more relaxed
in this teaching process and feels more comfortable.
You're also going to be using a dressage whip
as an extension of your arm
to help you be able to reach over,
and touch the horses hindquarter as you teach them
to come towards you.
So, the first step to this is teaching him to relax
with the whip or making sure
that he's relaxed with the whip.
So, I'm just going to ask Crosby to stand up here.
And I'm just going to take my whip
and starting at his neck and shoulders,
I'm gonna rub down his back over his hindquarters
and down his legs.
And I'm just making sure that he's not afraid of the whip.
So, if he moves around or he kicks up at it,
swishes his tail, those are all signs of some anxiety.
And if I saw those signs of anxiety,
I would just keep rubbing him until he relax
and then take the whip away.
So, if you want more details on desensitizing your horse
and understanding that process more,
which is kind of what we're doing here,
is to sensitizing with a whip,
I'll leave a link down below
to a video I did on to sensitizing.
So now let's move on to our next step.
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In this step, we're going to be teaching your horse
to side pass away from us.
This is really important for safety reasons.
When we teach our horse to side pass up to the block,
we also need to be able to move him away
if he gets too close to the block
where we feel like he's crowding us.
So to teach this,
you're going to start by standing in front
of the point of the shoulder here.
You're going to take your whip and put it
in the opposite hand of the direction you're going.
So, I'm going to be stepping Crosby over here to the left,
so my whip and my excess line is in my right hand.
I'm going to hold under my halter
and I'm going to direct Crosby a little bit over
to the left with my left hand.
So, I'm pointing a little bit to the left.
Then I'm going to tap him gently on his rib cage here
until he steps over.
When he steps over like that,
I'm going to step in front of him,
apply a little gentle backward pressure with my left hand,
and move him back to reward him.
So, when I'm stepping in back like that,
I'm just preventing him from going past me.
So one more time,
I'm going to stand up here at the point of the shoulder,
direct Crosby's nose over to the left,
touch him with my whip on his rib cage.
When he steps over,
I'm going to release the whip,
apply a little gentle pressure with my left hand
to step in back.
Now, things that you can run into with this are first,
your horse can want to go past you.
So, if I were to apply pressure and Crosby
were to walk straight forward,
I would just immediately walk into him and back him up,
applying that pressure and release
until he backed up and stood like that.
And then I would repeat the cue.
I tap him and he started backing up,
when I'm tapping him,
which is the other thing that your horse can do,
I would just simply turn and send them forward a step
and return him back to standing.
And if he's really backing,
I might take a minute just to rub him with a whip
and help him relax.
And then when you're teaching this,
you're just repeating it until you get to the place
where you can touch your horse
with a little bit of light pressure.
You can see Crosby that like right here,
he's not quite moving,
I just gently keep tapping him.
And eventually I get to that place
where I can just touch him,
and he just steps over just like that.
(soft melodic music)
Our next step is teaching our horse to come to us
when we lift the whip.
So, we're going to start teaching this
by lining our horse up to a wall,
and we're going to use the cue we just taught
of moving the horse away.
So, I'm going to stand here in front of him like this.
I'm going to eventually teach him
to move into me this direction.
So, I'm going to start in front
and I'm going to ask him to move away from me to begin.
So, I'm taking my whip over here on the opposite side,
and I'm going to touch him on the rib cage
'til he steps away.
As he steps away like that,
I'm going to pick up my whip on this side.
So, I kind of crossed over and lifted my whip.
And then I would do that again.
Touch him on this side,
as he's stepping, crossover, pick up my whip.
And then when he steps over to me like that,
I release and reward him.
Now over time,
if you're doing that a couple times,
you're going to be able to step away, pick up your whip,
and touch your horse on the opposite hip,
and he should understand to come up to you.
So right here,
you can see how Crosby understands
that when I lift my whip like that he should come up to me
and that's our goal.
So, we're working to the place,
we're on the wall,
he's confident and relaxed with that,
and then we're ready for our next step.
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So, now we're ready to have our horse side pass up
to us off the wall.
So, we use a wall to help prevent our horse
from going forward when we're first teaching him
to come to us.
Now, we want to see if he really understands this cue
by taking the wall away and seeing if he still responds
to the queue.
If at any time he struggles,
we would just go back to the wall again.
So, I'm going to gather up my line here,
I'm going to pet Crosby,
and I'm going to just pick up my whip
and see how well he understands this cue.
So, I'm lifting my whip just like I did earlier
and seeing if he remembers the queue and there,
you could see him kind of turn towards me,
which is really good.
So, I'm just going to gently touch him there, lift the whip.
And that was really nice.
So, if he gives me a really nice response,
you notice he didn't walk forward,
he just came directly over, which is what we're looking for.
So, I'm going to rub him there.
If he did walk forward a step,
I would just back him a step and repeat the cue.
So, once he is moving over to you with the whip like this,
you can lift your whip and he's stepping up to the whip.
You can replace that cue with your hand.
So, I'm going to set my whip down
and it just makes it easier.
Obviously, every time I mount my horse,
I may not have a whip around.
So, I want to teach him to come up to my hand.
So, I'm gonna lift my hand here,
and if he didn't come up, I would just tap him a little bit,
move back, lift my hand again.
And you can see there how he comes up to my hand
so I'm going to rub and reward him.
Do that again, lift my hand.
And that was really nice.
So, I'm going to rub him and reward.
Good boy, Crosby.
Now, I'm ready to put his saddle and his bridle on
and take him up to the block,
and we're going to see how this has helped us out
with our mounting.
So, now I've got Crosby all tacked up
and ready to mount.
I'm going to take him over to the mounting block first
and see how he does with this.
So, I'm going to step up onto my block,
raise my hand,
and ask him to step up to me and line up to the block,
just like that.
And that was really nice.
Now, if he gets too close to the block,
let's say he came up too close,
I could just use my knee here
and just apply a little pressure,
and he'll step away like that
because we've already worked on that.
If he gets a little too far past me,
I can ask him to back up a step.
So, it makes it really easy for me
to adjust him around that block.
And then when I feel that he's in a good place,
I'll just hop on him and just reward him here.
And you notice he stands really nicely
because his focus is on me.
So in doing this work,
I'm teaching him to bring his focus more and more on me
and less on the environment,
and that as a by-product of that,
he's going to stand more relaxed.
So, if you were mounting your horse from the ground even,
let's say that he was tending to walk off
and you were on the ground,
you could even use this without the block.
So, I could just take a moment to ask him
to come up to me here on the ground, with my hand.
And then when he comes up,
I'm just going to rub him there,
position myself where I'm ready to hop on.
Hop on and again,
he's going to have his focus more on me
because we just worked on bringing his attention to me
to do this movement of stepping over.
So, I hope that this video is a help to you.
If you're working on teaching your horse
to stand at the mounting block,
if it is let me know in the comments below.
I hope you enjoy your horses over this next week.
You have a wonderful week
and I'll see you in the next video.
(soft melodic music)