Western Jog??

My Mom has a Quarter horse/Arabian and he is 23 years old.When we got him from a rescue he was trained very well. I have taught him to lunge walk/trot/canter in both directions. Now I need to get a nice slow western jog. How do I do that? His Jog is really really fast and very uncomfortable. Some training advice would be great.My goal is to get him back into shape.

My horse has a really good working trot, but when I want him to jog I just sit deep in the saddle and sit to the trot and he slows to a jog.....try sitting deep first.....if he doesn't slow while your sitting deep, gently lift the reins WHILE sitting deep and see if he slows a little, if he does -gently lower your reins.....soon he will figure out what you want when you sit deep and ride the trot seated......

I'm not a teacher or instructor or an anything, so take my advice with a big steaming cup of FWIW:

When I want my horses to slow into a jog, I adopt an approach like this:



Someone who has a very flexible back can ride a horse like that without putting pressure on the horse's back, but I cannot. However, I find it easy to stay in the saddle. My horses then want to relieve the pressure on their backs, so they figured out pretty quick to slow into a gentle jog. Because we've done it a lot, my mare interprets my moving into that position as "Settle down, relax, give me a smooth ride and we'll both be happy". My avatar is a picture taken when I was asking for a jog, so not quite as extreme as Jack was doing in 1912.

If I want her to trot faster, I bring my legs back and start shifting my weight forward.

I can't tell you if that would work for anyone else since 95% of my riding is done on my own mare (and I'm the one who has ridden her for 99% of her riding life). A lot of what we do is stuff we've figured out together.

Small circles are your bff for this. Anything from 5-10 meter. Spiral him into a small circle, sit down deep, put weight on those stirrups and tell him SLOOOOOOWWWW. When he has slowed to the desirable speed relax and make your circle a little bigger. Change directions randomly to keep them thinking. Eventually make it larger and move him back onto the rail. If he goes back to his fast trot RIGHT AWAY take him back into the small circle until he settles in.

If he breaks, its cool. You are asking him to slow down! He just needs to just figure out what your talking about and you need to learn to support him when he is trotting like you want.
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^this works.....it helps to stop the "fast" thinking. It also depends on the horse's conformation and mindset. Some horses simply can not do a nice slow comfortable jog. Getting a slower jog requires a lot of leg, and bringing the horse "into your hand" so to speak.

Another method that might help you out...

The Road of a Horse Trainer: Teaching "Cruise Control"

Thank you all so much it helped a lot. Now I know what to do. I cannot wait to try it out!