Transitions: ACTIVE WALK / the 'GO' button!

[Elaine]

I guess I could also call this topic - finding the 'go' button

Ok, lets do this in walk first (start at the beginning!)

If you have a horse who's dull to light leg aids, then at the minute you're probably nagging him the whole time with your leg to make him go on. This which isn't fun for your horse and is a lot of work for you.

Perhaps you're putting in 10 ounces of energy and getting out 2 ounces from your horse.

That's an bit inefficent, so here's one way to can change it so 1 unit of energy in = 1 unit of energy out (I wasn't very good at science in school but I hope you understand what I mean!)

1. It's not your horses fault he's dull to leg aids. He's not thick or stupid. Have you ever seen a fly land on a horses skin, and for the horse to feel it and twich it off? Horses are VERY sensitive - including the big ones!

2. Right, with this knowledge in mind, here's what you can do:

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Walk your horse. (Your horse now probably looking half asleep, weight on forehand, possibly looking to the outside of the arena or focused on something up the far end of the field, and your squeezing your legs a fair bit). Make sure you're already doing these three things:

1. In your head think 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 (same thythm as horses feet)

2. Breathe deeply and slowly and exhale a lot. Blow lungfulls of air slowly out of your mouth. (yes seriously this makes a huge difference).

3. Don't stare at the back of your horses head. Pick a point in the distance and ride towards it.

OK lets change things.

• Ask once politely with legs (primary cue) ONE normal light squeeze.
  
  
• If you get no reply, use a secondary cue - (not your legs again!!) so either a stick, slap your leg, voice, whatever you want, which WILL make your horse move on. Be effective, make it happen in one or two strides. You will need to be determinded.
  
  
• Now your horse will give you a step or two or three of an active walk. When he does this - DO NOT NAG OR SQUEEZE WITH YOUR LEGS. Seriously, if you've spent years nagging with your legs at every stride - make now its so ingrained you dont even reaslise you're doing it - PLEASE STOP. If you horse is doing the right thing, dont keep asking him to do it - he already is!! Otherwise you're just training your horse to be even better at ignoring your legs.
  
  
• After a few strides, you're horse will probably slow down again. Perfect. give your horse one light squeeze with your legs. If he goes back to eth active walk, relax and enjoy it and dont squeeze your legs. If yoru horse ignores your polite leg cue, IMMEDIATELY go to yoru secondary cue - whatever it is. Get a result.
  
  
• Now your horse will give you a step or two or three of an active walk. When he does this - DO NOT NAG OR SQUEEZE WITH YOUR LEGS.
  
  
• You now have a new rule: Your horse is not allowed to do a slow walk EVER again. Any time he does - one light squeeze with your leg, if you get no response, do your secondary cue IMMEDIATELY.
  
  
• When you're training, the hard part is you need to be awake when you're on aboard, and focused to know every second if your horse is doing a sleepy walk or a normal active walk, and react accordingly asap. So mentally you need to be AWAKE and focus on whats happening, to get the best results when you do this.
  
  
• Have fun
  
  

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OK, so maybe your walk is toooo fast.... here are some ideas to get around this:

In your head think 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 (same of horse feet)

Breathe deeply and slowly and exhale a lot. Blow lungfulls of air slowly out of your mouth. (yes seriously this makes a huge difference).

Don't stare at the back of your horses head. Pick a point in the distance and ride towards it.

If your walk is too fast, take your horse off the track / outside rail / whatever and circle in walk. Once you get the speed of walk you want let your horse go back to moving in a straight line. (This works well for trot too.)

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ALL THE TIME IN WALK :: EXHALE A LOT....... LOOK AT A POINT AND RIDE TOWARDS IT ... HAVE FUN!!

[wonkeywoody]

Hi,
Any suggestions on the 2nd cue? I have tried an innumerate amount of different sticks/wip wop ropes/ plastic bag etc and used them in different ways too......... The biggest prob I have is finding something that works 2 days in a row! Short of a strategicallt placed firework I am fast running out of ideas.....
Help please........

[Elaine]

This stuff is definitely hardest to do right at the start, when you want your horse to start to change his behaviour. It then gets easier as you start to get more of the new behaviour you want.

Its hard to say without seeing the horse.

A few thoughts... to start off with is your horse lazy all the times / some of the time / only in certain places (eg arena). I'd look at current weight / fitness level / turnout and feeding. Maybe he needs more energy going into him so be able to have more energy available to you when you're riding. The DC in my pony club used to be telling parents to stop feeding the ponies oats as they were too full of life (I'm not saying feed oats, but you get out what you put in)

Also - its important to be able to control speed, direction & destination. If your horse when out hacking for example suddenly becomes more energised, he might STILL be controlling the speed, but you're happy with it because it whats you want.

OK maybe add something to the 2nd cue easier - maybe ask your horse with the second cue as the same time he is *more likely* to speed up - so maybe in the paddock / arena while he head is pointed towards something he's interested in / a gate etc.

Might be useful to get a spectator to watch you as well - if there anything blocking your horses movement. If your legs are 'on' / squeezing all the time it resists movement through the horses barrell which is turn slow down the footfall (and speed & energy)

Also how is your breathing, where are you looking, any rider things you can do which may impact energy levels also. Again you'd need to see whats going on.

When your second cue does work, STOP the second (and 1st) cue the split second you feel more life in your horse. You've got to reward asap, especially at the start to communicate what you want horse to do.

Other ways to encourage forward mvt which you could also incorporate to make it easier for your horse to twig what you want him to do:

1. Breathe faster and more shallow
2. Speed up your seat bones / match your horses mvt
3. Make your legs swing faster
4. Get more life through your body
5. Look up where you are going
6. Imagine going faster
7. Straighten up horse, travel in a straight line
8. Ride down a small hill
9. Point horses head in the direction of the yard.

Other ideas...

To simplify things, have you tried your horse on longlines? (without rider). What happens then?

Make sure saddle is not positioned to far forward and restrictign shoulder mvt.

Any old injuries/stiffness might be impacting things?

On the lunge, again what happens? Do vocal cues work?

Change the surface you're working on. Some surfaces horses tends to be able to go faster on more easily (for training purposes at the start anyway) - heard of people doing dressage to music at a video of a horse, but when rider played music in different arena/surface, music was too slow / too fast.

Also - how old is the horse? He might not understand what you're asking for.

Also - if you try something for 2 days then give up, horse might have twigged this. Again, hard to say without seeing.

Anyway, dont know if any of that is useful, am sure others will have more ideas too

[wonkeywoody]

Hi,
Thank you for the reply. There are some 'new' factors for me too try (if it ever stops raining!)
The horse is 7 and I think altold this is a respect issue really.
When I'm doing groundwork - he KNOWS perfectly well what I'm after and 'does things in his own time'.....bit like a tired sloth! I have been known to either wait him out applying the lightest touch or trying upping the levels quickly and with lots of pressure. Either one works but like my last post, only temporarily. I am still no further forward in resolving what I firmly believe is a pure respect problem.
He is now after 2 years of P (style) NH a MUCH nicer fella to be with but I still feel he has the upper hand. He will do just about anything I ask but it now seems that its on his terms.
Getting rather stuck (and bored!) with it.
There's no injury/feed/ tack issues. All been looked into and the necessary adjustments made, its just his attitude. Sometimes he can go and I think I've cracked it but the next day we can be totally back to square one. This isnt new, its been going on far too long.
Any help / ideas much appreciated!
On the lunge he will go from a voice cue but its short lived - have had someone on the ground with a whip and they only need to lift it for him to react but if noone is standing there it back to his usual.
Ground work - if I run he will GO but thats not helpful either!!!!!!!

[hobbidance]

I had this problem with a pony and child and while there was someone on the ground, or another pony in the ring, both worked fine. As soon as they were alone the pony barely wanted to do anything and the kid got so frustrated one day she grabbed a whip and hit her pony really hard which was very unlike this kid.

I taught her how to lunge her pony and told her that if she used loud clear commands for walk on, trot on, canter, and if she could get the pony to go forward without the need for the lunge whip then it should respond to her voice while riding also.

I gave her a reward system where starting she'd out loudly commanding a walk-on if there was no response she'd flick the lunge whip towards the pony's quarters, the second the pony dropped tempo command the walk-on again as soon as it walks 3 full laps of active walk, ask it to turn in and make a fuss of him and give him a small piece of carrot. Then send him out again do the walk making sure he's active then ask for a strong trot via the same method and a balanced canter via the same method. (I find it best to lay down 4 poles for unbalanced ponies who tend to lean in and 'motorbike' around on a lunge line.)
After the lessons turn him out for grass for about 20 mins as a reward (first lesson shouldn't be as exercise but roughly about 10mins as soon as you get all the desired responses then finish up and turn out)
As soon as the horse has an active walk from the second you ask him to go out on a circle you can increase the time of how long you lunge and get him to do it a bit more like an exercise. The max time this should be done for training is 30 mins. If you can get him to work actively for 30 mins then you can transfer it into your riding and then work on introducing new things into your lunge work instead. Such as trot-halt halt-trot, walk-canter, canter-halt. When introducing harder things like trot-halt canter-halt, the reward of turn out is always immediate at first and then gradually builds. It's alot to ask of young/untrained horses so the reward needs to be worth it. If you want more details just ask.

Also when you're leading the pony/horse they should also be thinking forward, it has to be engrained into them. They should be able to walk just as fast as you and you should be at their shoulder. When I train youngsters to walk on a halter I never allow them to just follow me around, I carry a lunge whip or dressage whip, carry it in between me and the horse and whenever they hang back just give them a small tickle with the whip on their flank. Keeping the whip between you and the horse also stops them from leaning on you. This is probably the first step to getting a young horse/pony forward thinking. Soon it becomes habit for them to walk up properly and also make trotting up easier as you horse isn't plodding along behind and is already thinking forward.