GVRD Horse Directory

I am afraid to canter with my horse. Can you help? Yes, I can. Without actually seeing you ride it is hard to determine why you are afraid - but I will touch on all the common reasons horse riders can sometimes be afraid to canter. There are many reasons why riders might be a little afraid and this problem is more common than many people may think.

Does your have the feel - If you've ever seen someone leading their horse and they're tugging and pulling, the horse obviously doesn't have the feel.Little does that person know he's teaching his horse to not lead with him. So how do you get a good lead with the horse?There are lots of ways.I'll try to describe one of my favorite horse training videos that shows Paul Esh doing this.When filming Paul Esh for http://www.SuperStarsOfHorseTraining.com, we caught him doing it like this:

Handling Feet - I was working with my yearling Pooka. She is an Arab-Shire filly. She leads OK and is not afraid of us. She comes up to us when we enter the field and will let us pet her when she is lying down. So today I decided it was time to handle her feet.
Just do it… I had a friend hold her lead rope while I started to touch her leg. I basically did the old approach and retreat working my way down to her hoof. This went well. I then tried to pick up her hoof and things did not go so well. She tried to move and jump around. I tried to hang on but she is about 500-600

The Importance Of Habit And Repetition During Horse Training - You're out feeding your horse. You're petting her, talking to her, and admiring how beautiful she is.Suddenly, you get the urge to get on her and go for a ride. The only thing is, you don't feel like getting the saddle and bridle - so you just jump on...bareback.Now you're sitting on her. Her head is high, her ears are twitching, and she's wondering what's going on.It's boring just sitting on her. You want her to move. So you boot her forward.She moves. You're delighted.

How To Use Smart Horse Training To Stop Your Horse From Bucking - As a for instance, one of the most common causes of bucking is that the rider punishes the horse's mouth without knowing it. Also, he may be giving the horse conflicting aids. For instance, the rider may boot his horse forward and jerk on the reins to slow him down. Then the rider jerks his head around to turn him. As the horse fights this the rider gets mad and boots him hard again.

Horse Training 101 - Horse training is an art. But it also has rules that govern how to work with and train a horse.For instance, when you're training a horse to do something, you don't want to drill him with it so much that he becomes sour on it and unwilling to do it next time. The trick is to get him doing what you ask, then asking him to do it a few more times, then stop asking.You can ask him to do it more for you the next day but you should stop asking for too much.

Do You Make These Horse Training Mistakes Loading Your Horse Mistake #1: "Here, Kitty Kitty..." Unless they have been educated, new horse owners often think a horse is like a cat or dog. They figure if they tap their thighs and say, "C'mon,...C'mon,...C'mon..." the horse'll will simply jump right in the trailer like a happy dog or cat. Mistake #2: "Using Food As Bait" Putting hay, grain, apples, or whatever at the

Teach Your Horse To Use His Hindquarters - Wanna help your horse develop and use his hindquarters more?Ride him up and down steep hills.Before you do though, I suggest you have control over him. Thus, when you ask him to stop, he knows to stop.And be sure to do it in places where you feel safest. Don't be around a bunch of wire fencing, posts, holes, etc.

Round Pen: The Great Equalizer - Although many horsemen and trainers extol the virtues of the round pen, many horse owners still overlook just how powerful such a pen can be in developing or maintaining a relationship with a horse. This is a shame because it is truly what I call the Great Equalizer in a horse-human relationship. Perhaps that bears some clarification…

Gold Horses, Green Horses & Color Coordinated Riders - A "goldie oldie" is a schoolmaster, a horse with a rich and sophisticated vocabulary or understanding of aid pressures. These horses are not the same as " babysitters". A babysitter is a horse that is programmed in a routine and will perform that routine even if its rider asks for it the wrong way. The schoolmaster, by contrast, understands and responds to full range of nuances within a corridor of aids. Since we know that the horse is very knowledgeable, its response to the new student's application of aids tells us volumes about what the rider already knows or still needs to learn at this point.

Pressure is Relative - When people first start playing with the concept of using pressure and release to show a horse what they want, they often mythunderstand pressure from the horse’s perspective. They may go to a clinic where they watched someone chasing a horse with a lariat or waving a longe whip in the direction of its hocks. They leave with the impression that that if they go home and do that same thing with their horse, they’ll eventually get the same result as the clinician. When it doesn’t work, they can’t figure out what they missed.

Early lessons for the Green horse - There’s no precise “training recipe” you can follow that works the same for every horse and every handler every time. That’s because people and horses have different personalities and what works for one is the wrong approach for another. And from day to day they’re different, too. You need to understand the goals and the sorts of things you can do to reach those goals. Then you have to experiment a little to see what works for you with that horse that day. The one thing that’s true for every horse is that you don’t control a horse by controlling his head with a halter and lead rope. You control a horse by first controlling his attitude and then you can control his mind.

Fixing bit evasions - Horses evade the bit when they are uncomfortable in their mouths. That can happen for a number of reasons. The most common one is that the rider has unsteady hands. The rider’s hands may be seesawing or pulling or constantly bumping the horse’s mouth and the horse looks for a way to get away from the annoyance. The bit may be too thick or too wide for that horse’s mouth or the horse may have a dental problem. The bit may fit the horse well but be the wrong bit in a particular rider’s hands. Horses that have been ridden in draw reins often go behind the bit when the draw reins are taken off.

Keeping a horse's attention - There are probably as many jokes about getting a mule's attention with a two-by-four as there are pickup trucks in Texas. When you are teaching your horse to heed, you must keep bringing its attention back to you. But you don't want to use a two-by-four. You don't want do a lot of exciting or loud things that will cause the horse to do a lot of exciting or loud things. You want to use body position and body language that is noticeable to the horse to keep its attention or send it in the direction you want. I call this "heeding."

What to do when your horse rears - When a horse rears, he is basically trying to evade the rider. He is protesting against whatever it is you would like him to do. He could either feel threatened or trapped and the only way may be to go up. There is the possibility he may not want to go forward and you would like him to. He may rear instead of simply going forward. Another reason a horse might rear is because he might want to go more forward and you are trying to hold him back. This is the case in a recent horse I purchased and the reason why I was inspired to write this article.