In this series, we've already covered many big lessons that lead to good ground manners for your horse, such as bridling, understanding body language, leading lessons and trailer loading. But a truly essential element of impeccable ground manners is getting a horse to stand tied patiently. But that doesn't begin when we clip your horse to a tie post. It begins with mini-lessons that condition the horse to give to pressure rather than pull on the lead. As you might guess, that's our topic for today.
"Why bother?" you might ask. After all, you get along okay and figure that you can live with the little tugs here and there. Because just as a horse gets out of control one little move after another, a series of small lessons adds up to a dramatic improvement in his performance. The horse who pulls back-even a little-will pull on the reins when we ride him. He'll jerk the lead rope out of our hand (or our arm out of the socket) when he gets scared. Sure, 99 days out of 100 he may lead fine. But unless we keep his manners tuned up, that hundredth time may cause major problems.
The good news is that we don't have to have big blocks of time to work on these mini-lessons. And they're fun, to boot.
Manners Matter
- Use training mini-sessions. Three-minute workouts will add up.
- Focus on what you want the horse to do.
- Keep the pop in pop quizzes. Make it fun.
- Make the effort to sharpen up your horse's manners.
- Work for 100% no pull.
Modifying Instinct
Pretend you were walking through a crowd and someone grabbed your shirtsleeve. Your immediate reaction would be to pull your arm away. You wouldn't even stop to think about it. That's the same instinct we're asking our horse to overcome when we teach him to give to pressure. The idea of developing perfect manners is that not only do we want him to move his head toward whatever's pulling on him, we want him to do so without having pulled away first.
When a horse is wearing a halter and lead, there's no physical pressure except the weight of the tack, like a hat on his head. When you pull the lead rope forward or down, it pulls on the halter, which presses into the top of the horse's head. The horse naturally raises his head, which increases the pressure.
