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The first time I saw Max, the exercise rider got on him bareback and he immediately bucked her off. It was a fairly violent episode and the rider was injured. Thus, it is important to me that Max be trained to accept a rider bareback. We spent most of the first day introducing voice commands to Max. He is still learning them, and is not completely reliable. Although the videos of the past few days make him look like a star pupil, I would still not trust him in a larger arena or on the open trail. However, reliability to voice commands will come with time. And while we are working on that, it is important to start getting a rider on his back.
We have spent the second and third day preparing him for the rider and if we did our job right, he should accept the rider calmly and without reservation. To make sure that all will be safe and uneventful, I draped my body across his back and had my assistant lead him around the round pen before sliding off. I repeated this exercise five times in a row without incident and that convinced me that he was ready to move on. The day culminated with him being fully mounted by a rider bareback and then ridden quietly at the walk around the arena using nothing more than the lead rope and halter.
Caution, the videos make it look like a simple process but please be reminded that I am showing the final product of each phase of the training and not the training itself.
In the mounting process, I really want a mechanism whereby I can ask a horse to present himself for mounting. When the horse fully understands the implications of this command, then I can be reasonably assured that if he obeys, he probably has no objections to being mounted. To this end, I teach the horse to bring his hindquarters over to a fence so that I can be very comfortably above the horse before I attempt to mount. This also give the horse a safe way to become accustomed to a human above him.
Under normal circumstances, mounting a green horse for the first time can be an awkward undertaking. Either the rider is trying to hop onto the horse from the ground with one foot in the stirrup, or the rider is being boosted by an assistant. During that process, there are many precarious moments when the horse may fidget, move, dance, or even kick and buck. At that moment, the rider is usually in the most perilous position with one foot in the stirrup and half a leg over the horse. The obvious tensions associated with these positions tend to exacerbate the situation.
By teaching the horse to come to the fence and to move closer on command, I can sit comfortably on the fence and carefully and easily mount the horse. If the horse startles or moves, I can hang on to the fence instead of the horse, and I can also call the horse back into position. Furthermore, when the horse is ridden regularly, it will be a convenient method of mounting as the horse will be trained to swing by the fence, or the mounting block to pick up the rider.
In this series of videos, I show that Max is willing to present himself for mounting for both myself and an assistant. I also show what it looks like from the rider's perspective.
This video shows the same lessons of trotting, cantering, and then stopping with Max moving to the Left. His stop is pretty good and shows a great deal of Impulsion. However, I am still concerned about his straightness. Although this may be something that I can overlook in a green horse, it is something that can become a habit if not addressed early.
This is Max's third day at School. He has learned to give the walk, the trot, the canter, and the stop from voice commands. However, he has not learned to skip gaits. In other words, we have only performed one transition up or down. From the walk, to the trot, or the trot to the canter. And downward transitions have only been from the canter to the trot, the trot to the walk, or the walk to the stop. We have not skipped gaits such as going directly from the walk to the canter, or the canter directly to the stop.
Obviously these are more difficult. So far, all we can be sure the horse knows is that when we open our mouths and say something, that we want him to perform one transition up or down. Thus, we cannot be really sure that he truly knows the difference between the command to trot or the command to canter. In fact, from experience, I can be pretty sure that he does not know. The way I will teach the distinctions of these commands to Max is that I will start with the stop. If the horse is cantering, it is easier to completely shut the horse down to a stop than to ask him to subtly change gait to the walk.
In this video, we warm up by asking for the trot and the canter and then the stop. I am pretty forceful about the stop as stopping is a safety concern and when I say stop, I want the horse to pretty much come to a sliding stop with his hindquarters engaged. Max has learned this new lesson on his third day and performs beautifully. As usual, with a green horse, straightness is a problem.