Käyttäjä:VanhooseKent220
Horse groundwork training is a crucial a part of having your horse prepared to ride. You should start with three goals in mind. First, you want to be a leader for the horse. Horses naturally turn to an innovator as they are herd animals in the wild. For safety reasons, you need to think that leadership role. Otherwise your horse will probably be making the decisions, like when you should run away as he hears something scary on the trail. He's also more prone to exhibit bad horse behavior should you haven't established leadership. With leadership comes respect from the horse, along with a horse that does not respect you is more likely to rear, buck, and bite among other problems.
You will find three simple horse groundwork training exercises that you can do to establish leadership. The first that needs to be done is round pen work ala Monty Roberts "join up". Take your horse to a round pen and move forward rope off. Then send him out to your left at a canter. Get him to bypass about five times and then question to alter direction and go around to the right. As he is certainly going around apply pressure-swing your rope in the hip and keep eye contact at the withers. At this time, start looking for signs of acceptance in the horse. This will be communicated to you with four basic gestures. An ear you indicates respect-the horse is watching what you need to say. Next comes licking of the lips or chewing. This can be a manifestation of relaxation, which really implies that the horse isn't feeling any fear-or more to the point he trusts you. If you notice these signs, try taking some from the pressure off-stop swinging your rope and back away a little bit. The horse may indicate increased trust by dropping his speed down and circling at smaller distances. The ultimate sign to look for may be the horse dropping his head. When a horse drops his head, this is a submissive act that says "you're my leader" and "please let me join the herd". As he performs this, take eye-to-eye contact from the horse, walk backwards from him inside a spiral pattern, and exhale. This will bring the horse to a stop. You can now approach the horse and obtain him to hook on (follow you with no lead rope).
The second horse groundwork training activity to include in your routine is simple leading. Put a lead rope in your horse and just walk around. Search for signs of disrespect: crowding, edging past you while you walk, and taking 2 or 3 more steps when you have arrived at a stop. If your horse indicates a number of of those signs, spend a couple of minutes each day walking backwards away from your horse. This way you are able to simply be in front of the horse as he's being led, and he might find you as a leader in his mind. Occasionally request stops by stopping, raising both of your hands with palms out and exhaling. While you're doing this, make sure the horse has both eyes on you. If they're not you he isn't focusing (disrespect), so bump the rope to bring his nose you.
Once leadership, trust, and respect have been established, it is time to show your horse groundwork training toward preparing a horse to be ridden. The aim now's to setup a set of cues that will be given to control and direct the motion from the horse, and teach him these cues on the floor. The cues given use a pressure and release reward system. Pressure is the cue to move, release of pressure is a reward to the horse that reinforces the specified response. The main areas you want to work with are: continuing to move forward and backing up, moving the forehand over, moving the hindquarter over, and disengaging the hindquarter.
Let's start with moving the forehand. To move the forehand, apply pressure between your jaw and withers within the neck area. When the horse takes a step away from you, release. Do the exercise on sides. Then repeat with the hip area. Disengaging the hip is a procedure for applying pressure to the hip and having the horse circle his hip around while keeping his front legs in the same position. His hind legs should go over each other. This is known as "disengaging" because we're taking away the forward impulsion from the horse-when his hind legs are crossing he doesn't possess the balance essential to move forward.
Copying applies pressure alternatively towards the opposite sides from the face. Shaking the lead rope is going to do this, or you can apply pressure with your hands (in mid-air just by the nose). To ask the horse to maneuver forward, that you can do a driving exercise. Stand in the midsection left from the horse and put your riding or carrot stick over his back. Point forward with your left hand and tap the back of the horse with your tool. The tapping is "pressure" asking the horse to move forward. When he starts moving, you can release the pressure.
The ultimate groundwork exercise will prepare for riding is lunging. The main focus of lunging utilized in by doing this is not to wear on the horse, but rather to construct communication. To get this done you'll start the horse moving in a walk and get him to prevent periodically. When he does that well both in directions, then start to include trotting. In the beginning, get him to start in a walk then ask for trotting, then focus on having him decrease from a trot to some walk. Then stop again. Mix things up so your horse isn't sure what you're going to ask (keep him paying attention). When he does this well, begin including cantering within the exercise.
