Last month Patrick wrote about why horses rear, now he takes a look at how to resolve the situation
Foundation Knowledge:
The key to training a horse and preventing rearing is understanding the timing of the pressure and the release. Pressure and Release: Pressure is a negative thing and release is a positive thing/reward.
PRESSURE - What does the horse see as pressure/negative? Pressure can come in various forms - bumping your legs, squeezing your legs, pulling the reins, using a whip, even giving voice commands.
RELEASE - What does a horse see as a release/positive? The best way to release/reward a horse is to stop the pressure - NO bumping your legs, squeezing your legs, pulling
the reins, using a whip,
giving voice commands.
TIMING – How is the timing
important? Every moment
we handle or ride our horse
we are creating pressure
and release, without the
timing factor this all means nothing. An example for a human; you may not like
doing something such as washing dishes but if you
were given £100 every time
you washed the dishes you would wash the dishes
every time you were asked,
(the £100 represents the release/reward for the
horse- NO bumping your
legs etc). However if every
time you were asked to
wash the dishes, you were nudged lightly, but continuously while you were trying to wash them you would hate doing the dishes and after a while you would refuse to do them at all (the nudging represents the pressure/negative for the horse - squeezing/bumping your legs on your horse). Now if I was to ask you to wash the dishes but you refused and I started nudging you lightly but continuously until you started doing the dishes, then I stopped the nudging straight away and gave you a £100 (this represents the timing) you would really truly prefer to wash the dishes than not. Understanding when to add pressure and then release it is the way to get a horse to go forward when it does not want
to, the correct use of timing will ensure that you do not
accidentally teach your horse to rear.
Scenario - What to do to make sure you don’t teach your horse to rear; The first thing, never make it so that your horse only has the option of rearing. If I was going down that same trail and the horse stopped at the gate I would not let the horse turn left or right, but I would use my legs with timing to get the horse through the gate. I would bump my legs lightly to start off with (this is the pressure) and build to a slightly stronger bump, but never kicking really hard. I will continue bumping lightly until I feel the horse take one step forward. As soon as the horse steps forward I will stop bumping my legs and let the horse stand there knowing
Preventing Rearing, Part II
written by Patrick Hopgood