The clockwork exercise you'll encounter here will take the previous training steps to the next level as you teach your horse to move his shoulder in any direction you cue him to move. It might help to think of this maneuver as "shoulder reining" rather than "neck reining." You'll still use the neck as the point where you eventually deliver the rein cue, but the horse's neck can bend while the horse keeps moving straight ahead. But, if you move the shoulder, the horse absolutely changes direction.
Shoulder control exercises also let you practice speed control, lead changes, diagonal movement, side passes, turns on the haunches (pivoting around a hind leg), reining-type spins, and backing while your horse builds muscle, balance, responsiveness-and you have a blast in the process!
Balance Shifts
When you ask your horse to do something new, you want to put him in a position that makes it physically easy for him to do what you ask. You can see how this works by asking a friend to help you with a short demonstration.
Have your friend stand facing you. Ask him or her to look to one side, as if looking over a shoulder and be relaxed and responsive. If you gently press your finger on your friend's nose or chin, he or she will move that shoulder over. In this exercise, you'll ask your horse to do the same thing. Rather than having your horse's shoulder come toward you, which seemed natural in your first exercise, now it will move away.
No doubt you noticed that as your horse brings Spot #2 and Spot #4 (from the previous article) together, he shifts his balance to his opposite shoulder, making it easy for him to move in that direction. He does this naturally, which makes it easy to teach it as a response to a cue.
There's a reason you went out into the pasture to really look at your horse in this issue's first exercise. Watching the way he moves in the relaxed environment of the paddock helps inform the way we'll work with him on the ground and in the saddle. You're going to use the following sequence of steps as your horse walks forward:
1. Ask for the nose.
2. Adjust the head elevation.
3. Bring the two spots together.
4. Keep your horse walking briskly forward.
5. Pick up the rein and ask for the shoulder to move over.
6. Release the rein.
7. Pick up the rein again and ask the tail to move over. Always finish your exercise by moving the tail.
Like Clockwork
In this next step, you're going to teach your horse to move his shoulder away from you in a very precise manner.
Visualize. You'll begin this exercise on the ground, but imagine yourself to be sitting in the saddle as if you and your horse are the center on the face of a clock. Your goal is to move your horse in different directions to try to hit the numbers on the clock exactly.
To begin, 12 o'clock is straight ahead. You're going to practice having your horse step precisely on 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, and so on. You don't need to take many steps toward each number at first because this is physically hard for your horse to do until his body loosens up and his muscles develop. Doing too much too soon is an easy trap to fall into, though, because it's such a cool move!
Rather than asking your horse to step on 1 o'clock 15 times in a row, be careful to just do 1 to 2 steps on 1 o'clock. Release the rein and go back to your circle. Make the challenge be to get your horse to different time numbers and back to being straight again in the fewest number of steps.
Now practice getting to all of the numbers, switching sides of the clock frequently since this is such hard physical work. Changing sides also helps confirm to him that he did something right. The more you switch sides, the lighter and more responsive your horse becomes.
The sequence is:
• 1 o'clock, then 11 o'clock
• 2 o'clock, then 10 o'clock
• 3 o'clock, then 9 o'clock
• 4 o'clock, then 8 o'clock
• 5 o'clock, then 7 o'clock
• 6 o'clock is straight back
• 12 o'clock is straight forward.
