VIDEO TRAINING
Warning: Undefined variable $classes in /home4/tvsmvp1/likehorseman.com/wp-content/plugins/perfect-pullquotes/perfect-pullquotes.php on line 66
Your horse may be confused by what you say with those reins so here’s a simple fix that takes 3 minutes to learn!
Without realizing it, we pick up and drop our pressure on the horse’s mouth – and by doing so we’re sending mixed signals. Mixed signals that confuse our horses. That’s a beginner rider kinda mistake – but something easily fixed. Here’s a super-simple little thang you can try that’ll teach you how to keep “even pressure on those reins.”
Don't Be a Jerk (On the Reins)
Fix a Bad Habit in 3 Minutes
You’ve got to learn to get the feel in your hands.
Once you apply pressure to the reins, once you pick them up, and until the end of time or until that horse gives to your pressure, you have to keep the exact same amount of pressure on those reins. So if you pick up the reins and you find that you need to be closer to his mouth or farther away from his mouth with your grip, you have to learn what it takes to keep the same amount of pressure on those reins as you change your placement on the grip… as you place… as you change… your placement on the… reins. Here’s a great tip or trick to teach you how to keep the pressure nice and even.
First thing you do… attach a bucket to a fence. Once you’ve tied the bucket to the fence, clip a lead line to the bucket. So you hold the lead line like it’s like it’s a rein. You pull the bucket several inches away from the wall… and then you want to change hands several times — as if it’s a rein — and you want the bucket to stay the same distance away from that wall. Watch… Your hands have got to work together. Don’t let one hand fall asleep and let the other one do all the work. Now, the bucket never got any closer to the wall.
This is what we normally do… This is what you don’t want to do. If you pick the bucket up — and this is the rein — and when you change hands, you let it go, back against the wall and then you pick it up and pull it away from the wall again… The horse is feeling this. He’s feeling a different change of pressure. And so he thinks every time he gets released, he thinks that’s the end of whatever it is you’re asking him to do. So he gets confused. Remember, we’re trying to teach the horse that this is a 2- or 3-second request. It’s not 30 minutes. So every time he feels a release — because that’s his reward, a release of the rein pressure — he’s going to get confused if there’s no rhyme or reason. So you have to get better with your hands. You have to get skilled. You have to learn to keep the same amount of pressure.
Now let’s say, if I pull this away and I’m too close… I’m too close to the horse’s mouth… This would be the horse’s mouth… Then all I have to do is use the other hand, okay, to take up that slack… And you see, the bucket never got closer to the wall. By the same token, if I’m too far away, I can get closer by picking up the slack with one hand and it holds the pressure while the other hand moves. Voila!