(southwestern country music)
- G'day, I'm Warwick Schiller and I'm about to go
for a bit of a trail ride, here.
You know, in lockdown, we can't haul our horses
out to state parks and stuff like that,
and so I've been taking Bundy out here, trail riding
around our neighborhood here, recently.
And so what I thought I'd talk about today
is common problems that people have
when they're trail riding.
Usually, those problems are horses rushing home
or horses refusing, stopping, rearing up,
wantin' to spin, wanting to turn around
and run home, won't go forward, all those things
when you're out trail riding.
And so I'm gonna show you a way you can
go about teaching horses how to trail ride.
So this is not trail riding, this is teaching him
how to trail ride without going beyond threshold,
'cause when those horses are wantin' to rush home
like that, or those horses are stopping, rearing up,
all those sorts of things,
you're over their threshold of what they can handle.
And so what you can do, and I don't know if you've noticed,
but I'm doin' it already, is this is a version of something
that I've used for a long time,
I call the 50-foot trail ride, but you might notice
I started here in my trail ride and I went
for a bit of a walk.
I was talkin' to you guys and I didn't get
terribly far from my trail ride, my horse hasn't decided
to go home yet, and then what did I do?
I turned around and went home.
And the thing that horses do when they wanna go home
on the trail ride is they're thinking,
"I'm just gettin' too far from home."
They're gettin' further and further away
from the place that they're comfortable.
So what you can do is just start out,
go, like I said, I sometimes call this
the 50-foot trail ride, even though it's
a different version of what I used to do
for the 50-foot trail ride, so I went
about 50-feet the first time.
The second time, I went about 60 feet.
The third time, I'm gonna go about 70 feet
and I'll turn around and go back home again.
And what you'll find is the further you go out
the less you'll have to,
initially, you'll have to turn around a lot
to start in the threshold.
But when they start to get to where they are pretty sure,
"Hey, any time that I'm gonna get to go back home, anyway,"
they don't start to get all concerned about it.
It's really, really simple.
It's a simple exercise and it's very easy
for your horse to do, and it's a very easy
for your hose to do with one exception,
is your outlook.
So let's say I was going for a one hour trail ride
and I'm heading out on my one hour trail ride right now,
I would consider this bit here to be
part of my trail ride, wouldn't I?
And let's say I go for a one hour trail ride
and I turn around and I come home,
and I'm walkin' along here, my trail ride's
not finished yet, is it?
It's not finished till I get home.
And so when I'm here, I'm still trail riding
and when I'm
here, I'm trail riding.
What you have to do in this exercise
is be in the moment and be present and not think,
"Oh, I don't wanna do this crap, I wanna
"go for a trail ride."
What you have to realize is you are going for a trail ride.
If you were going for an hour long trail ride
and you were here, as you started out
you wouldn't be thinking, "Can't wait to get
"on my trail ride!"
I am on my trail ride, okay?
When you're coming home, same thing.
So what you've gotta be able to do
to do this exercise well, here, I'll show you something
else I do to help with this, too.
If there's grass available out here,
at the end of one of my little loops,
before I turn and go home,
I will stop and let him eat the grass.
Gives them a reason to wanna come back out next time.
So what you've gotta do is you have to be present.
You have to be in the moment.
When you're there, you're there.
Not, "Oh, this is not a trail ride
"unless I get to the top of that hill."
Because otherwise, you will tend to have some frustration,
your energy will be completely different,
and you'll be like, "I just want to get this out of the way
"so I can go for a trail ride," and your movements
tend to become jerky, everything becomes a bit tighter,
and your energy's completely different.
Instead of like, "Hey, we're havin' a great time,"
you tend to have that tight, nervousy, energy there.
So just try this and you might spend
half an hour the first day getting from my gate
to my mailbox, right there.
But then the second day, it might take you five minutes
to get there and twenty minutes to get up there.
But pretty soon, you'll be able to go out and back
and it won't be a big deal.
But the thing is, if your horse is rushin' home,
jiggin', prancin', doin' all those things
if your horse is freezing, napping, what they call it
in certain places, and doesn't wanna go out there,
you've gone over your horse's threshold.
Recently I've been talkin' about good leaders
only ask yes questions.
If you ask your horse to do something he can't do
and you get a no, that erodes their confidence in you.
Doing this right here gives your horse a lot of confidence
in you, and also gives your horse a lot of confidence
that, "I'm gonna be able to go back home quite soon."
So if you're out trail ridin' or if your having any
trail ridin' issues, give this little exercise a try.
But like I said, the big thing you've gotta do
is you've gotta change your perception of what's going on
and you've gotta realize, "I am trail riding."
Don't think of this as training.
Think of this, "I'm trail riding."
And like I said, you'll be able to go further and further,
and further out there and pretty soon, you'll be out there
having the trail ride you've always wanted
on a happy, relaxed horse.
So, happy trail riding.
(southwestern country music)