(Western music)
- Good day, I'm Warwick Schiller,
back with another installment of
only asking yes questions from your horse.
Or as I like to say, one of the principles of training
is they need to know the answer before you ask the question.
And the thing I've been working on
for the last few episodes is getting your horse to stop
when you pick up on two reins from a canter.
And so, in the previous episodes,
we've covered the lateral flexion,
we've covered the bend to a stop, we've covered the back up,
we've covered the stop from a walk, stop from a trot.
And so today, I'm gonna work on the stop from a canter,
and it's exactly the same thing as I did with
the walk and the trot.
I'm gonna canter towards the fence,
and three seconds out I'm going to close my fingers.
Now, with Bundy I'm not 'cause he will just stop there.
But so, I'll kinda show you how it would go.
Giddy up Bundy.
So I would, I'd canter towards the fence.
And right about here, one Mississippi, two Mississippi,
three, I would've picked up back there.
He'd come to a stop.
And so, I would have a little bit of feel in these reins.
Now, he'll just back up softly like that.
But the big thing about this is
I'm trying to keep the brace out of him,
I'm trying to keep the argument out of it,
trying to keep the no out of it.
Okay, if you just start pulling on their heads,
you get into a rustle
and they lose a lot of confidence in you.
Okay.
Something I didn't mention in the earlier ones,
if I'm only doing this when my horse is completely relaxed
at any of these gates, whether it's the stand still,
the walk, the trot, or the canter.
If my horse is up tight, I am not gonna pull on two reins.
If my horse is up tight, I'm gonna bend him to a stop,
which untracks those hind legs.
Gets him to come to a stop that is relaxed.
Okay, I talked about that in the first one.
They've got to come to a relaxed place when you stop,
it can't be just a stop,
which is why I don't like that one rein stop
'cause it's just making the horse stop.
Okay.
And so, okay, Bundy, let's cruise back over here again.
Okay, so after a while, you get to where you canter
toward the fence.
And three seconds out, you close your fingers,
and we don't need the fence anymore.
After a while, like I said, this could take weeks,
could take, I don't care how long it takes.
The whole process from the walk, the trot, and the canter
could take weeks, could take a month.
I'm not in a big hurry, but the thing is,
I'm not gonna just pull on ahead and make him stop.
Okay, I'm gonna teach him how to come to
a soft stop like that.
And so, then eventually,
once he can do it every single time three seconds out
from the fence, then I can just canter along
and I can just pick up here.
And he comes to a nice stop like that.
And it's not big deal,
but the whole thing with only asking yes questions,
you've gotta break your training down
into tiny little pieces.
And like I said, you gotta make sure there's no anxiety
involved in it.
So I'll tell you what,
I'll just go a little bit faster here.
So I'll canter up here and I'll go for a bit of a zoom here.
Look, Bundy's having a little bit of a spook.
Go for a bit of a zoom down here.
Now, I'm just gonna close my fingers.
And I can still come back to a stop from a canter
using the same amount of pressure on the reins
as I initially told him to back up with.
Okay, and it's not achieved by pulling, and jerking,
and carrying on,
it's achieved by teaching them how to do this
one step at a time.
And it's something I'm really big on in my training
is teaching the horse how to do every little part
that they need to do, and they gotta be relaxed too.
Like I said, I don't ever pull on two reins on them
if they're up tight,
because you can probably get them to stop
and leave the up tightness in there.
I'm always gonna bend them around,
like I'm always gonna bend them to a stop
if they're up tight.
And it's not about getting them stopped,
it's about getting them relaxed.
So if you look back at the earlier episode,
when I was talking about that lateral flexion,
when you laterally flex right here,
when I pick up here, I want him to think this way.
Okay, I don't want you to stop, put his head over here,
and be thinking over there.
I want him to be present.
Because if you've done your meditating,
your mindful and stuff,
having your mind and your body in the same place
at the same time is when you are relaxed.
And that's really what we're trying to get them to do.
I really don't try to teach a horse to do anything
when they're not at relaxed state,
because it just, you end up with all sorts of
pushiness, and braces, and stuff in there
that doesn't serve you very well.
So anyway, that's gonna be the end of this
little bit of a clip about how I would go about
teaching your horse to stop off of two reins.
And it might seem like it's slow and boring,
but I'm always being told that good training
is pretty slow and boring, and mine is definitely that.
So hoped that helped.
(Western music)