Think
Outside the Box
By Todd Martin
Over
the years I have found that some of my lessons help me more than the
rider that I am giving the lesson. Because, during lessons I am asked
questions about things that I sometimes have not thought about in
some time. This causes me to go back and re-live situations and horses
from the past. Whether they taught me something that I may want to
use again or something that I may not want to repeat.
I was asked the other day during a lesson why I was in the wrong lead.
I responded with, "One mans wrong lead is another man’s
counter canter" . By this I mean that often times in order for
a trainer or rider to take his horse to the next level, you sometimes
have to think outside of the box.
Let’s take for example you have a problem with your horse leaning
or dropping a shoulder when loping in a circle. Sometimes you will
hear someone say that you need to use your inside leg pressure to
push the horse’s shoulder up and lift up with the inside rein.
This works most of the time but, soon becomes something that you are
constantly riding around doing because it seems now that the horse
continually does this and the problem is compounded.
Another way to think or work on this problem is rather than work on
his shoulder, fix the way the horse lopes. Meaning that he will not
lean if he is loping straight with his rear end underneath him. The
deeper and stronger you have a horse driving from the rear end the
more that he is forced to level his shoulders and lift both to lope
collected and straight.
Yet
another way to attack this problem is to counter arc and counter lope
the horse. If you are having problems with a horse that drops his
left shoulder when loping to the left, then try to lope him to the
right in a left lead with his head to the left. This will force him
to pick up his left shoulder without using as much leg. It also requires
him to keep his shoulder elevated continuously, and does not allow
him to revert back to dropping it. Something to remember when doing
this is that if your horse has not been asked to use his body in this
way before, you as a rider need to be a little patient in allowing
your horse the chance to get the hang of it. I have also found that
doing this will help you with your guide to the approach to a lead
change.
The
key thing to remember is that in order for your horse to be proficient
in a particular maneuver he must be able to effectively do all maneuvers.
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