I want to teach my two horses to side pass.
Where should I start?
I have watched videos on youtube, but I didn't find anything good. So what better place to ask?:lol:
start on the ground. put her in halter with leadline . bring her to a fence and stand her so she is facing the fence. you stand facing her barrel. You aske her with your hand or with a whip to step her shoulder over, then to step her hip over, then shoulder, then hip , etc. stop and reward with a tiny rest every few steps and dont' make it a really long try at first.
After a bit, start to ask her to step over with pressure right at the middle of her barrel and see if she will stay perpendicular to the fence.
this is hard for a hrose, so don't overdo it the first time you try. Keep it short and fun.
start on the ground. put her in halter with leadline . bring her to a fence and stand her so she is facing the fence. you stand facing her barrel. You aske her with your hand or with a whip to step her shoulder over, then to step her hip over, then shoulder, then hip , etc. stop and reward with a tiny rest every few steps and dont' make it a really long try at first.
After a bit, start to ask her to step over with pressure right at the middle of her barrel and see if she will stay perpendicular to the fence.
this is hard for a hrose, so don't overdo it the first time you try. Keep it short and fun.
Thanks for the Response TinyLiny. I can I get her to step her shoulder over? I can get her with her back end, but not her shoulder, she will just swing her back end around and face me again.
If she is swinging her hind end around, then you are pressing too close to it. Move the target of your pressure further forward, even as far as her nose. When asking a horse to move its' sholder over, if pressure on the shoulder doesn't work, pressure on the face will! Horses will always move their face away from pressure. YOu can use a tapping motion with your fingertips, or the head of the whip and if she doesn't move by tapping the air near her head, then move in and actually tap briskly on her jaw or nosebone. She will move, and when she swinges her head over, you put pressure on ther shoulder, becasue it will notwbe more available to you. When the shoulder steps over, stop all pressure and give praise.
It's always harder for a hrose to step sideways or backwards than forwards. It's hard for the horse to step sideways without any forward motion at all , and if she is learning, then it can be mentally challenging, too. it gets easier, though, doesn't it?
tapping a horse from the ground is pretty,but its not worth a darn when you climb up there.straddle your horse,walk forward,as your walking pull his nose slightly to the right and turn your toe out about 4 inches behind the girth.a horse has to learn where to put his feet in a sidepass,so start with some diagonals and adjust him from there
Well "they had better" have a good foundation on them to get to that point, and a good foundation will start on the ground. But like you said, to each his own.
My opinion and experience is that your horse is much less likely to get frustrated (which can lead to rearing and balking) when you make it very clear to them on the ground first what it is that you want. On the ground, I can use more body language to communicate with the horse when I ask it to move over.
Say I was trying to teach my horse to move its shoulder over and I was in the saddle. I could tippity-tap all day with my leg and get nothing, but if I hop down and tippity-tap with a whip as well as use my strength to get that shoulder over, the horse is more likely to move. Then we can move down to lighter cues and eventually use that in the saddle. This is just an example of why starting on the ground works better (for me).
I can tap my horse lightly on the side with the butt of my whip and he will step over. When I get on his back, I can bump him with my leg and guess what ... he will step over. Now I have a way to move my horse over on the ground (which is not something that's useless, even outside of training purposes...) AS WELL as the saddle.
if you have noyhing better to do than groundwork.thats where patience and experience comes in,is you can pass up some of those extra steps on the ground and get some work done without messing him up
Skipping steps helps nothing. Eventually the steps you skipped will show up and you'll have to go back and teach it anyway, so better sooner than later.
skipping unessecery steps hurts nothing as long as you know what you are doing
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