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Stubborn Kid + Frustrated Pony

8K views 38 replies 18 participants last post by  Mercy 
#1 ·
Hey all!
I'm teaching some informal riding lessons to a few kids who love horses. Two of them are a little older and have been improving a lot. The other is a 6 year old girl who quite frankly does not understand most of what I advise her to do.
Up until recently I have just led her around on him and taught her the ropes of steering/stopping/backing. The pony I have her on is my been-there-done-that ex-4H pony, but he's admittedly not perfect for a 6-year-old brand new beginner. He is great with kids, would never hurt a fly, is well trained, but he just does have the patience to be pulled on. When she starts to pull on him, he tosses his head to get the reins out of her hands and begins to blatantly ignore everything she asks and walks around aimlessly. This horse does not typically have respect issues and he is usually very good about yielding to leg and rein cues. I physically show her what she should be doing with her hands (the horse does best on a loose neck rein) but after a minute or two she always ends up resorting back to pulling back and kicking the horse around.... I'm kind of at a loss for what to do. I feel like I am constantly saying "let him have his head!" and "loosen your reins!" and stopping her to explain that the horse will start to ignore her cues if all she does is pull back on his mouth. Then of course she gets frustrated when the horse won't cooperate, ends up crying and blames the horse for misbehaving, and I am left to try to politely explain to the mother that it is her child's fault that the horse will not cooperate when the mom comes to watch and asks me why the horse is so "stubborn".
I really try to be nice to the girl because I really want her to have a good fun experience with horses.. I feel like she just doesn't understand, even though I am constantly explaining what to do along with the reasoning of why to do it.
In an attempt at a solution, I decided to say "I get to lead you around until you learn not to pull on the horse's mouth". That resulted in an extremely boring ride for the both of us and an unhappy kid. Then I decided to attach a lunge line and have her practice balance. Found out balance is not the problem here (we have not graduated to a trot yet).
So today I decided take away the bit. I attached reins to a web halter and had her ride around in that. It went better IMO, she walked him over some ground poles and walked the barrel pattern, but the girl still ended up pouting (for no reason that I am aware of).. :neutral:
I am not a riding instructor (nor do I want to be anymore :rofl:), I do it for free. I may also not be great at communicating with really young kids.. If anyone with kid+horse experience could give me some advice here, I would really appreciate it.
 
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#38 ·
Book to Help Set Limits for Student & Parent

I just got a book from the library called Teaching Safe Horsemanship, by the Amer Assoc of Horsemanship Safety. It might help you, OP Spec, with wording when needing to set limits for parent of child you are helping. In any case, it will for sure let you know what a huge risk you are taking if allowing the child to do things that are potentially dangerous given her limited skill level.

It is certainly making me rethink when and how I allow the neighbor kids to interact with my new little horse. It's discouraging to read about how quick people can be to take advantage of any opportunity to profit from accidents, but valuable to learn about safer ways to have people and horses interact with each other.
 
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