Re: Newbie ? Jumpy horse


"stasya" <matasa@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1148659165.920349.158640@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chris Henderson wrote:


One of my theories is that a horse that is spooky is a horse who does not
have his full attention on you, his rider. So, you need to keep your
sessions very active, so that he has to keep paying attention to you, to
find out what's coming next. So, don't just ride him a million times
around
the outside track of the arena. Do LOTS of circles, turns, figure-8s,
changes of direction, transitions, etc. Keep his mind on YOU. And when
it
wanders, ask him to do something, to get it back.

He is a lot less spooky-ish at the end of our lessons, this is for
sure. He's quite responsive and lively right off the bat, which makes
for a fun lesson, and as he gets a bit tired, his spooky goes down, but
so does his liveliness. My instructor says its because he's been out on
a pasture for a month and a half with no work done, so he's just
spoiled.

Do you lunge him before you ride him at all? Now, I know that a lot of
people don't believe in lunging "to get the bucks out" but sometimes, it's
better for them to burn off any excess energy with you on the ground versus
up on their backs. Lunging is good too, for getting them focusing on you
and in "work mode" before you hop up.

You didn't answer my question about what he gets fed. If he's getting
grain, it could be that which is making him too hot.

Here's a question then, more of a general one. Where *exactly* are you
supposed to be looking when you're riding? I tend to look just past the
horse's ears.

Me too. I try to not look down but look out ahead of me. Of course, this
is easier said than done ;)

This is good info. Thank you. So how do you handle the 'scary end' of
the arena? I ask this because on our pasture horses, we ride them a
bit, and there's a number of places in the pasture they refuse to go.
They will go as a group, but I want the one I'm riding to go there
because I've asked him to. It might be a 'leaving the others'
mentality, or it might be that there's something terrible scary down
that path between the trees that eats horses when they're alone.

Well I believe in picking my battles. I'm not an uber-confident rider, so I
tend to be cautious about what I do, and stay in my own comfort zone. For
instance, I don't force Tequila to go all the way down to the scary end of
our arena...because I'm not confident that I can deal with however she might
act down there. So, I go about 3/4s of the way up. This is actually an
accomplishment for me...it wasn't too many months ago where I was too
nervous to ride her outside of our round pen (which is at the non-scary end
of our arena). I'm confident that one day, I will be riding her on the
entire outside track...but I'm not there with her yet.

I guess what I'm saying is that you have to decide *how much* you want your
horse to go to the areas where you know he is afraid. Are you prepared to
deal with however he might act once you get there? If you're confident that
you can handle whatever happens, then by all means, get assertive with him
and *make* him go there. I choose, at this point in my relationship with my
horse, to stay where *I* am comfortable. So, I don't push her out of both
of our comfort zones, to the point where either of us is going to get
nervous. I know that others will disagree with my approach, but it is what
has worked for me and my mare :) People commented to me, just last night,
about how much she has quieted down, and how well she is going for me now.

Oh, and one other thing that you could do is lots of ground-work and
desensitization. Expose your pony to lots of scary things, and teach him
that you are there as his leader, and he can trust you to take care of
him.
I think that a large part of my horse's change of attitude is due to the
fact that she trusts me now. If I stay confident with her, then she
knows
that there is no reason for her to be afraid.

The other thing I thought of last night was that it's been windy and
crappy weather lately, and I notice the pasture horses are a lot
spookier than usual when it's windy. But then we rode outside for the
last 10 minutes of our lesson yesterday, and he loved it, did all his
turns nicely and walked nicely, no spooking at anything.

They *do* seem to be more agitated when the weather is bad. But if you're a
confident rider, you can usually ride them through that stuff and get them
focused on you instead of on the weather/wind. It all comes down to
confidence, really, and the horse trusting you as his leader.

Of course, sometimes they just pull crap because they know that it just
might work ;) So, the other thing you need to do is distinguish between a
horse who is trying to dominate you by resisting your cues, versus one who
is truly afraid. I know that my mare, for whatever reason, is truly afraid
of the far end of our arena, as she has had much better and more confident
riders on her than me, and has still spooked up there. So, I know that it's
a genuine fear thing for her...which is another reason why I don't push her
to go to the end of the arena where I *know* she is afraid.

Chris



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