The Novice Horseman Blog

I watched a few hunter hack classes at a recent national show.  Hunter hack is an English class that consists of 2 fences to be jumped individually by each entrant, then rail work by the entire class.  It is always the same . . . some horses shy away from the first jump or just flat refuse to jump it.  The shows always have flowers, brightly colored rails, trees at the side of the standards or any combination of these.  Some of the horses have either not seen these before or if they have only at the shows.

The fix is easy.  Go to a dollar store & buy some artificial flowers.  You can drill holes in the ground rail and put flowers in each hole.  Or you can push the flower stems into the dirt just behind the ground rail but in front of the bottom rail.  Your horse may still shy away from the flowers for a short time at home, but he will get used to them.  Then when at the show, flowers are not such a big deal to him anymore.

Also, paint a few of your rails any color other than white.  This doesn’t have to be an expensive task.  You can use some left over house, wall or barn paint.  Maybe your neighbor has some paint that they would like to get rid of.  You can paint the rail all one color or put stripes on it.  Use your imagination.

The end effect is to get your horse use to something that you would see at the show.  This fix is good for the hunter or jumper classes also.  Don’t wait until the next show & wonder why he keeps shying away from the jump.

The weather in Oklahoma has been wet. . . no it has been reeeeaalllly wet . . .  no it’s monsoon season!!!!  It rained 21 days straight recently this last month.  There were days the rain was close to 4″ in a 24 hour span.  That caused some flooding in the low areas, but generally just made everything sloshy & extremely muddy.  The mud in places was over ankle deep.  This type of weather is not conducive to riding.  So, my horses have had a 3 week vacation.

Fortunately, Mother Nature graced us with dry & rather hot HUMID weather this past week.  The pasture & arena dried out.  The weather this morning was absolutely beautiful.  I couldn’t wait to get out the barn to ride.

Dollar was not covered in mud, so grooming him was easy.  After saddling-up, we were off to take the first lesson in over a month.  For being off for so long, we actually had a good ride.  He was a little rusty in bending his body into the turns, so I had to school him a little.  Dollar is the lazy , almost bomb-proof type horse.  He wanted to do his lazy toe dragging walk and didn’t want to trot at all.  That was way too much work for a horse that thought he was still on vacation.

We managed to get through the entire lesson with only one small incident.  He actually spooked at his shadow or it could have been the goose nearby . .  I don’t know.  He only crouches down to the ground a little when he spooks, which is hardly ever.  We worked on backing, small & large circles and the gate.  He did all of this pretty well.

Me on the other hand . . .  my legs were getting tired.  My ankles felt like I was trying to break them.  My thighs & seat felt like I had been sitting on a rock for an eternity.  This was only halfway through the lesson.    I knew then that I had been off my horse too long.  By Monday, I’m going to be very sore.  

The worst of the pains for me is my knees.  I have moderate arthritis in both knees.  When I’ve had a layoff from riding, my knees tend to get extremely painful & a bit swollen.  I guess I need to find some type of exercise that will keep me in shape.  It’s really amazing to me just how short of time your muscles and joints forget things.

Maybe, I should just teach my horses how to scuba or water ski when there is rainy weather like this.  At least that way I won’t get so sore from not being able to ride.

Day 2 of this seminar was interesting, but was very long.  There were numerous slow parts to the seminar.  This one was being filmed and it had several lengthy slow segments while staff members were setting cameras, calling staff members to the arena for filming and microphones being delivered.  There didn’t seem to be much preparation.  If there was, it seemed to be changed at the last minute.  There was also a time where students who were being graded on sections of the clinician’s program.  This could have been done after the day’s seminar and invited the audience to stay to observe instead of making it part of the seminar.  This made the seminar too long and for me, not very interesting.

To hit the good points,  there was a part on why the snaffle is considered a training tool by this particular clinician.  We were shown how he uses the snaffle by demonstrating with a bit in his hands.  This allowed the audience to see how each side of the snaffle works independently of the other.  I won’t go into the mechanics of bits that is too much subject for this post.  If you are really interested in how each type of bit works, you should probably invest in a book on bits.  You would get a much better explanation than I could try to give.

There was also a section where a horse with a severe head tossing issue was worked trying to stop this bad habit.  This particular horse had been worked the day before with good results, but still did not accept pressure applied through the reins to the bit when being cued.  This horse did not like anything on, around or near it’s head.   The clinician worked with the horse for about another 45 minutes with some pretty good results.  The horse’s owner will still have some work once they get home, but they got a good starting point.

There also another section where a horse was being trained to lay down.  This particular part I found hard to watch at times.  While I understand that by achieving this maneuver, the horse is giving you his total trust.  I personally just don’t see much use for it.

I did get some training ideas, so I would I classify the seminar as time well spent.   If you have never been to one of these seminars, you should go to one.  The ones I have been to were not very expensive, just $25 – $35 for 2 days.  I was able to purchase tickets from the clinician’s website, so that was pretty easy.  I would definitely invest in checking out a seminar near you.  You can find a schedule for seminars in just about any horse magazine.  If you don’t have a subscription to a magazine, just click one of my recommended magazines links on my website to get one started.

There will also be merchandise & DVDs of the clinician’s training program for sale at these seminars.  Most of the clinicians sell their entire training system,  which can be expensive.  However, if you buy this way, each section is usually cheaper than buying one section at a time.  Buying one section of the program as you need it may be more affordable.  Some also sell memberships to their club websites for a monthly fee.  These have extra material available only for the members.  Any of these are potentially worth the price if they help you and your horse.  But to be worth the money, you have to use them.

In these tough economic times, you have to decide what is right for you.