A good equestrian knows how to read her horse’s expressions. Because before you can teach your mare dressage movements or even just enjoy riding her, you have to implant the basics in her first, which entails her understanding you and you understanding her. And our equine pals can’t exactly let us know how they feel—we have to read their expressions. We’ll take the practice of basic roping for instance.
It isn’t difficult to find a roping teacher or lesson thanks to roping clinics. Trainers who set up such clinics usually provide manuals or at a minimum advise the equestrian to accustom their pony to ropes and prepare the animal for the actual roping clinic.
Manuals that are meant to accustom horses to ropes or lassos as preparation for roping training have detailed instructions regularly with large graphics to better aid the owners in understanding how to carry out the lesson and thus prepare their mares. With such manuals, you should not have an issue preparing your equine partners, unless they’ve had a bad experience connected with ropes. I they have then ropes would definately make your horse panic when you try and rope her.
A pony, for instance, which was roped to be caught when it was three and was sent to be gelded, shod, and trained, in all chance has since developed fright of ropes. The rope is associated to being caught and the negative experience that followed. You should expect such a horse to gallop away at the appearance of a rope or lasso, and wouldn’t stop unless a wall it cannot jump over is in the way.
So what do you do when your mare has developed fear of ropes or, for some unknown reason, panics when you get into the saddle and start to lift the rope off the saddle horn? You can go to an expert, a pony trainer, to get some assistance. A plan of action much like the following would probably be recommended:
Return to the groundwork level. While holding the rope, quietly stroke your mare. Then start swinging the rope at you side. It is understandable if the horse accepts your strokes while you’re holding the rope but will panic after you start swinging the rope. What you need to do is continue softly swinging the rope and keep an eye out for signs from your mare indicating the she is thinking. Horses blink, twitch their ears, breathe quicker, or quiver their lips when they think. These are your cues that your mare is thinking—most likely, processing what you are doing or making an attempt to do. When you see a sign that your pony is thinking, stop swinging the rope and praise him.
“Release” your horse from that part of the lesson. She has already recognized the exercise and is prepared for a repeat or another exercise. When you see your horse snorting, breathing deeply, moving her feet, licking or chewing or both, yawning, shaking her body or head, or dropping her head, then that indicates that you can release her from the lesson.
Horses have their own way of expressing themselves. A good equestrian should focus not only on dressage-level routines but should also take time to learn a horse’s expressions and how to translate them to better understand her equine friend. She should similarly help the mare get over her fear, if there’s any.
Horses are Heather Toms’ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100’s of articles with other horse lovers… like all things about riding hats
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