Bringing a young horse along requires patience, consistency, and a solid understanding of groundwork principles. While many methods exist, this guide focuses on a systematic approach to lungeing, emphasizing clear communication through pressure and release. This method aims to build a foundation of understanding, ensuring your young horse remains willing and engaged throughout the training process.
When starting with a young horse, especially one new to training, seeking guidance from an experienced trainer or instructor is highly recommended. Their expertise can be invaluable in mastering the precise timing of pressure and release, which is crucial for preventing confusion and frustration in your equine partner. Imagine the feeling of being repeatedly asked a question without understanding the correct answer – this is how a horse can become unwilling.
Building a Foundation: Essential Groundwork
Before even considering the lungeing stage, establishing fundamental groundwork is key. This involves teaching the horse to move away from pressure calmly and to respond to various body cues.
Walking in Hand
Assuming your horse is halter-broke, the initial step is establishing clear expectations for walking in hand. Your horse should walk calmly beside you at an appropriate distance, paying attention to your movements. This includes stopping when you stop and turning when you turn. If the horse crowds you or loses focus, they need to be prompted to move their feet. Without these basic rules in place, progressing to more complex training becomes significantly more challenging.
Understanding Pressure and Release
A core component of this training is teaching the horse to yield to pressure. This begins with disengaging the hindquarters. By gently swinging the end of the rope towards the hindquarters, gradually increasing pressure, you encourage the horse to step underneath itself. The ultimate goal is for the horse to move its hindquarters with purpose when pressure is applied. This skill is directly transferable to halting effectively on the lunge line later on.
Additionally, using the back of your hand on the girth area to apply pressure teaches the horse to move sideways. While the long-term goal might be a refined half-pass, any sideways movement is a successful first step. This sideways yielding is not only beneficial for future lateral work under saddle but also fundamental for understanding general “moving away from pressure” cues, which are essential for lungeing.
Further groundwork includes teaching the horse to move its shoulder over, yield to pressure on the poll to lower its head (extremely useful for haltering and bridling), and other essential movements. These exercises build a common language between you and your horse, preparing them for more advanced training.
Introducing Lungeing: The Next Step
Once the foundational groundwork is solid, you can confidently move to the lungeing stage. While a round pen can be helpful, this method is designed to be effective even without one.
Initial Lungeing Cues
Begin by facing your horse at a distance. To cue the horse to move to your left, lift your left hand and point in that direction. This visual cue will become a future command. To back up this cue, swing your rope in your right hand towards the horse. The horse may offer various responses, such as backing up, but persist with the rope swing until the desired response—moving to the left—is achieved.
In the initial sessions, don’t expect perfect circles. The primary expectation is that the horse moves in the pointed direction. Once this directional cue is understood, you can then refine it to encourage walking in a circle. This may require repeated pointing and backing up with the rope, but the horse now understands the basic command.
Refining Lungeing Skills
Personally, I prefer the horse to consistently walk in a circle, halt, and face me (using the previously taught hindquarter disengagement), and be able to turn in either direction before moving to more advanced paces.
Next, introduce the “over” cue. Use the command “out!” and step towards the horse. This is taught by sweeping the rope along the ground towards the horse, starting from behind you. Since the horse already understands yielding to rope pressure, transitioning to moving sideways away from this cue should be relatively straightforward, requiring only reinforcement.
At this point, you should have a polite horse that can walk, stop, turn, and stay out on a circle. Only then is it appropriate to ask for more forward motion, progressing to a trot and eventually a canter.
Understanding Progression and Patience
The pace at which a horse progresses through these stages will vary significantly. Factors such as attention span, eagerness to please, and even the horse’s inclination to simply graze in a distant pasture all play a role. Therefore, it’s essential to tailor training to the individual horse. Some horses may grasp these concepts in a couple of days, while others may require much longer. Patience is paramount.
There are numerous approaches to training young horses, ranging from extensive groundwork to minimal preparation, and from using round pens to avoiding them altogether. This method represents a specific approach that has proven effective for me. The critical element in all horse training, particularly with pressure and release, is timing. Releasing pressure before the horse offers the correct answer can lead to a horse that learns it doesn’t have to comply, potentially developing bad habits and a lack of understanding. Conversely, releasing pressure too late can result in a frustrated horse that is unwilling to try.
For those new to horse training, engaging a professional trainer or instructor for at least the initial sessions is strongly advised to ensure correct application of these techniques. Wishing you the best of luck in your training endeavors!
