利用者:ShaynaGracia741
Horse groundwork training is a vital part of getting your horse prepared to ride. You need to begin with three goals in mind. First, you want to become a leader for the horse. Horses naturally turn to a leader as they are herd animals within the wild. For safety reasons, you need to assume that leadership role. Otherwise your horse is going to be making the decisions, like when to run away when he hears something scary around the trail. He's also more likely to exhibit bad horse behavior should you haven't established leadership. With leadership comes respect in the horse, along with a horse that doesn't respect you is much more likely to rear, buck, and bite among other problems.
There are three simple horse groundwork training exercises 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 some round pen and take the lead rope off. Then send him out to your left in a canter. Have him go around about five times after which ask him to alter direction and bypass right. Because he is going around apply pressure-swing your rope in the hip and maintain eye contact in the withers. At this point, begin looking for signs and symptoms of acceptance in the horse. This is communicated for you with four basic gestures. An ear on you indicates respect-the horse is paying attention to what you have to say. Next comes licking from the lips or chewing. This is a sign of relaxation, which really means that the horse isn't feeling any fear-or more to the point he has faith in you. When you see these signs, try taking some from the pressure off-stop swinging your rope and back away a bit. The horse may indicate increased trust by dropping his speed down and circling at smaller distances. The final sign to consider may be the horse dropping his head. When a horse drops his head, this is a submissive act saying "you're my leader" and "please allow me to join the herd". As he does this, take eye-to-eye contact from the horse, walk backwards from him inside a spiral pattern, and exhale. This can bring the horse to some stop. You can now approach the horse and obtain him to hook on (follow you without a 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 as you walk, and taking two or three more steps when you've arrived at an end. If your horse indicates a number of of those signs, spend a few minutes every day walking backwards from your horse. By doing this you are able to simply be while watching horse as he's being led, and he will see you like a leader in the mind. Occasionally ask for stops by stopping, raising both hands with palms out and exhaling. While you're carrying this out, make sure the horse has both eyes on you. If they are not you he is not focusing (disrespect), so bump the rope to bring his nose on you.
Once leadership, trust, and respect have been established, its time to turn your horse groundwork training toward preparing a horse to be ridden. The goal now is to set up some cues that'll be provided to control and direct the motion of the horse, and teach him these cues on the ground. The cues given make use of a pressure and release reward system. Pressure is the cue to move, release of pressure is a reward towards the horse that reinforces the specified response. The primary areas you want to use are: continuing to move forward and copying, moving the forehand over, moving the hindquarter over, and disengaging the hindquarter.
Let's start with moving the forehand. To maneuver the forehand, apply pressure between the jaw and withers in the neck area. When the horse takes a step from you, release. Do the exercise on sides. Then repeat using the hip area. Disengaging the hip is really 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 one another. This is called "disengaging" because we are taking away the forward impulsion from the horse-when his hind legs are crossing he doesn't have the balance essential to move ahead.
Backing up applies pressure alternatively to the opposite sides of the face. Shaking charge rope is going to do this, or you can apply pressure together with your hands (in mid-air just by the nose). To inquire about the horse to move forward, you can do a driving exercise. Stand at the midsection to the left of the horse and set your riding or carrot stick over his back. Point forward together with your left hand and tap the rear of the horse together with your tool. The tapping is "pressure" asking the horse to move forward. As he starts moving, you can release the pressure.
The final groundwork exercise you can use to prepare for riding is lunging. The focus of lunging utilized in by doing this is not to wear on the horse, but instead to build communication. To get this done you will start the horse moving at a walk and ask him to stop periodically. As he does that well in both directions, then begin to include trotting. In the beginning, have him start in a walk then request trotting, then focus on having him drop down from the trot to a walk. Then stop again. Mix it up so that your horse is never sure what you're likely to ask (keep him focusing). When he is doing this well, begin including cantering within the exercise.