Flying change

How do I teach my mare to do a flying change?

Would recomend learning how to get a flying change on a horse that knows them, yourself, before trying to teach her. Either that or hire a trainer to teach them to your horse. Basically you want to be able to ask for the new lead and the horse changes. If they don't get it by half a circle or so, do a simple change. You want to keep the horse straight, its hard for them to change if theyre too bent in either direction. You can try teaching your horse over a pole. That's how I taught mine. She would change over a fence, so I just used a pole on the ground so she had to pick herself up, and she learned to respond to my leg.

When in 4-H I was taught a flying change. All we were told to do was to slightly tilt your reins to the side you want to change to. I had an Appaloosa that simply did it himself. Eventually, I will be te4aching my horse better leg pressure for everything. But anyway, you don't want too much tilt for your horse to turn. Just enough leaning and tilt for your horse to respond. Hope this helps!

Hold on Hold on! Flying changes are a advanced movenment in Dressage. What level are you at? It takes a very balanced horse to do a flying change. Remember its easy to teach, then recycle the action. In other words its hard to teach your horse the right way of doing things when you have taught her other wise. Can you please explain your situation more? :roll:

I don't do dressage but in hunters flying changes are an absolute must at very early levels. My pony does them automatically most of the time, but I have helped teach other horses to do flyong chenges. We usually start with a ot of simple changes so the horse has some idea of what you want them to do. Then we start over cavalletie than poles and then just across diagonals.

By getting a trainer to help you .

What I do is I pretend like im pole bending and whats how my horse learned :)

I agree with DW, a lot of things can go wrong if you do not have the right experience or trainer helping you.

I made the mistake of teaching a young horse flying changes too early, she could do fabulous 3 time changes but I could never get a counter canter and it was a struggle sometimes on the diagonal because as soon as my weight shifted she'd change. This made getting her out of the lower dressage levels quite difficult.

So please seek professional help before potentially damaging your horses training.

I would get to the point where I could pick up either lead from a standstill, walk, or trot, on the straight, easily and immediately. After getting the leads and simple changes down pat, the flying changes might just come, but it is a little more complicated than that because you want to make sure they are driving the change from their hips and not just changing in the front.

When you get simple changes and individual lead commands down pat, maybe have a trainer help you finish off the flying changes (it would only take a couple of guiding lessons to point you in the right direction if you had all of the foundation).

Yes frog, I did practically the same thing, I was so stoked that I taught a young horse to do a nice balanced flying change, and then when I was teaching other movements, as soon as I shifted my weight, he would change. And it became very fustrating...

To blossum...Seek professional help darl..