Roxy is a 5 1/2yo shire mare
that came to us for reschooling after she bolted with a chain harrow with her owners.
We were asked by her owners to break her to ride while she was with us for retraining
and this is her first time under saddle. You can see here she is being ridden in
soft rubber bit,
answering the rider's commands even though it is her first time with someone on her
back.
Sarah is now taking her out on the road to show she is controllable
even when leaving the confines of the yard.
We also show that she will rein back when entering the yard.
This is a good test to see if the horse is actually listening to the rider or driver.
As you can see she steps back when asked.
All this is being done just in a soft rubber bit. Roxy was difficult to bridle when she
came to us;
here Sarah is putting her bridle on, which is a bit of a struggle seeing as she is
tall and Sarah is short
but she does not mind even when Sarah climbs up on the manger
in order to put her ears through.
Here we're taking Roxy around our arena showing
she will remain calm and controllable even when encountering the scary hazards.
She will walk over tarpaulin that makes a noise under her feet
walk happily under ribbons that flap about around her head,
past road signs, into puddles and between big barrels without panicking.
The recent storms have somewhat battered our arena
however you can see Roxy will walk happily amongst all the hazards
even while it is windy and raining.
Now Nancy is riding to show that she still goes well for a different
rider
and will also behave on a grass surface. She is riding Roxy over the cones bridge
which makes a different noise as it is hollow underneath. Unlike most bridges, ours
has small gaps between the boards which makes it even more alarming to the
horse.
Trot up.
You can see Roxy
will walk calmly over the bridge as well as reining back over it.
The slope contributes to the difficulty too as we are asking her to rein back both
uphill and downhill which she does happily.
Although she had already gone over a tarpaulin in our arena,
this one is larger and a different colour but Roxy still walks over happily
even when it is moved about by Sarah and Baz.
This shows the level of trust that the mare has in her handlers and the rider
as she will let us put the tarpaulin over her head. Notice how her hind leg is at
rest showing she is relaxed while we're doing this.
As Sarah pulls it over her quarters,
we then asked her to walk out from underneath it.
Here Sarah is mounting her from the ground,
showing that Roxy does not mind having a person hold on to the stirrups
and pull themselves up on her back, i.e. if the rider is tall enough not to
require a leg up.
As we show in this section, Roxy can be ridden out on the roads
and is still well behaved in a soft rubber bit even when going past lorries,
cars and bicycles.
We also take her into the river
showing that she will walk calmly into water when asked.
okay
I