Teaching Your Horse To Go Straight

In reining the horse has to carry his body straight for many maneuvers. But a horse can be straight in two ways: straight and stiff like a board, or straight and supple like a stretched rubber band. Some reining horse trainers like a horse to be straight all the time, but I've found that this degree of straightness is a hindrance. If a horse carries himself like a board, all he can do is travel straight ahead; he can't easily maneuver from this inflexible position. I want my horses to be supple in all their work because this guarantees that they can be positioned correctly for any maneuver if a horse is straight and flexible. I can angle or curve him into whatever position I want. While I train only reining horses, the ability to guide a horse especially onto either a straight line or an arc is important to just about any event that I can think of. It gives you the tools to arc your horse around the short side of an oval arena in a rail class, make a precise figure eight for horsemanship, travel straight through a trail obstacle, or make a straight approach to a fence in a jumping class. The straight-plus-supple approach helps even if you want your horse to perform in a straight body position all the time because it eliminates the possibility of his becoming stiff and rigid. We'll start our program by asking your horse to bend his head, neck and shoulders. Then we'll work on his hips. In each set of maneuvers, we'll work first on a circle, because the arc will help bend the appropriate body part. This will also make the work easier for him to understand once he's comfortable with the work on a circle; we'll be asking him to maneuver on straight lines. And when he's learned to bend his body in both directions, it'll be easy to eliminate the bend and ask him to travel straight. These drills will help you, too, because you'll feel the shifts in your horse's position as he bends or angles. As a result, you'll develop more awareness of his position in the rest of your riding. It will be easy for you to tell when he is straight and when he is not and you'll have the tools to correct him instantly. If the colt's body turns one direction, and his mind turns the other, resistance happens, and you're getting only 50 percent of your circle. I recognize this in a horse when his body turns to the left, for example, and he is looking off to the right. In reality he's thinking about heading right even though his body is turns left. The drills also provide a sequence of exercises in which a horse learns to maneuver first in easy ways and then in progressively more difficult ones, so that he gains confidence and stays relaxed in the process. I believe in any training that creates tension is counter productive because a tense horse doesn't learn what you want him to. What he may learn, if as he tenses, you cue harder to "make" him perform, is to respond to strong cues instead of subtle ones. That's an unfortunate lesson because horse's don't automatically move away from pressure. They move into pressure, the "fight" phase of the "flight or fight" response. Strong cues not only upset the horse but also encourage a fight response rather than a soft, giving one. In contrast, the work in this program is designed to build responsiveness to very light cues. I've found that a horse needs as much cue as his rider customarily applies so he can be trained just as easily to respond to extremely soft leg and rein pressure as to much stronger cues. Because a horse can begin work on this material as soon as he becomes used to a rider, one thing the drills do is keep him form picking up bad habits in the earliest stages of training. A lot of people don't insist on correct body position at the start of training, but I feel that if you give a horse the typical thirty to ninety days without requiring correct position, all you're doing is giving him an opportunity to pick up habits you'll have to get rid of later. For instance, he may have decided that he's comfortable loping with his hip to the outside and his shoulder to the inside: if you allow him to travel that way for thirty to ninety days, the idea that this position is the correct one will get imbedded in his mind. You'll have a hard time convincing him otherwise later on. Besides using these drills with youngsters, I also use them regularly on older horses that need retraining. And I find that they benefit solid show-ring performers. I return regularly to the drill as a means of checking (and if necessary, restoring) his responsiveness. How long it takes for your horse to learn the drills will depend on his mental and physical makeup. As students, horses fall into three categories - good, average and confused. There's no such thing as a bad one. And the first sign of confusion is tension and resistance, as a horse fights something that he doesn't understand. The next column will discuss these drills in detail.