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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.