Hey, don't forget: If your horse's head is always carried up about yay high, if it's
always up high in the air, what you need to remember is that the way that you get
vertical flexion - that's a fancy way of saying up and down - the way that you get
the horse's head to come down is by actually getting the horse's head softer
left to right. Okay, so if you concentrate on simply bringing that horse's head to
the left and to the right softly with a nice soft neck, with a nice soft feeling
through the reins, you'll be surprised how that horse's head will now suddenly
come down, down, down, and everything will look prettier and softer. The way that
you can do this is simply by asking the horse to disengage his rear end - and
that's just a fancy way of saying he stops the front but the back end keeps
moving around in a circle. So you can work on this a couple of different ways.
If you want to turn this into a ground training exercise, if you'd like to do
this from the safety of the ground, then outfit your horse in a bit and a bridle
and get your horse walking around you in a circle. You'd be in the center of the
circle with your horse walking around you. You would not be moving away from
that particular spot that you're in by more than a few inches. Your horse is
shaped like a banana. On one side he's shaped like this, on the other side he's
shaped like this... So what works well on one side may not work quite so well on
the other. When you're trying to disengage your horse, when you're trying
to get the front to stop and the rear end to continue to move, what you need to try
is one of two things on both sides. First, try taking the rein and pulling
the horse's nose towards his tail.
The other thing that you can try is to take that very same rein - again very near
the horse's mouth - and pull his nose not towards his tail but above it, up towards
his hip.
Okay, so what'll work on one side is for you to pull the nose towards the tail
and what'll work on the other side is to pull the nose towards the upper hip. So
it's just a matter of an angle. So when you first begin practicing this all you
have to do is watch the shoulder nearest you and when it stops and yet the back
end of the horse is moving, that's a disengagement. Stop, pet the
horse, move forward, and try it again. If you're riding your horse, on one side
what will work is pulling the horse's nose directly towards his tail...
And what will work on the other side of the horse is for you to take the rein directly
towards your opposite shoulder.
It's important when you do this that in between each repetition that you pause
just long enough to hear something. That signals to the horse that it's the end
of the exercise. It's not a 30-minute exercise. It's a three or four second
exercise. So drop the reins, pause long enough to hear the traffic go by or your
neighbors laughing or another horse whinnying... Okay, move the horse forward
and then repeat the entire exercise. It's important that with each repetition that
you practice on a different side of the horse. So with the first repetition,
practice on the left side, the second repetition practice on the right side.
Switch back and forth each time. So all you have to do then to bring your horse's
head down is to go out and practice this exercise. Go out and practice on the
ground or get on your horse's back and do it that way. So practice this for 20
minutes today and 20 minutes tomorrow and 20 minutes the next day, and sooner
rather than later what you're going to find is that your horse is going to
carry his head a lot lower. He's going to be much more maneuverable and you're
going to have a lot more fun riding.