You’d be better advised to look upon the activity of lunging your pony not as an inescapable chore, but as an opportunity to enhance your pony. It’s a useful activity, whether or not it is summer or winter. When made a routine part of your horse’s exercise, it keeps your pony from getting bored and makes him alert. A lot of advance has been made in the quality of lunging gear and other equine coaching aids during the last few years. A lot of new coaching aids have popped up in the market that are of positive help in improving your horse’s techniques.

You get coaching equipment (with different variations) that go round the hindquarters of the pony. These rigs are helpful for encouraging a horse to go under and to realize more efficiency in hind leg usage. Other coaching rings position the horse right away, rather than getting him to find the correct position for himself. Pony rigs that work on propelling the hindquarters can get the horse to work and stretch more at the neck and the back, features that are awfully desirable regardless of what discipline the horse might be employed in. These rigs operate on the classic principle of preparing the horse’s “engine” first, which would then help him accomplish perfect self-carriage.

Lots of folks typically use side reins as coaching aids for lunging. These aids can work well at getting the horse to develop the neck and the head. Side reins are most helpful for horses that are tense and prone to resistance. The standard way to approach such horses is to utilise minimally elastic hardware with them, in order that they learn it’s better to relax and get forward. If there is too much give on the side reins, it causes the same effect as the human hand, permitting even if the pony is resisting. This will confuse the pony.

Old time training rigs like the Chambon and the De-Gogue are engineered to inspire horses to keep a chilled, low head carriage. These rigs can cause panic in inexperienced horses, and so it is a good idea that they be used either under the control of veteran trainers or by the trainers themselves. These rigs work on pretty much the same principle discussed earlier: release of pony resistance is equivalent to release of training aid resistance, which allows the horse to get to the best head carriage. As far as those coaching aids that work essentially with the head and poll area are concerned , the handler must keep his animal working through out of the rear: it is better to train the horse to keep its head in an acceptable position even though it is worked thru its body properly.

This article isn’t intended to act as a complete guide to everything procurable from the market by way of horse gear and coaching aids. Nonetheless I have attempted to give some valid features of the most typical aids, although a general majority of the more unusual aids use similar principles, it would be recommendable when procuring any new type of equipment to ascertain its exact action and so gain an idea of what you have to subject your horse to. Further, it’s also sensible that you get 2nd views from experienced trainers and yard managers. Whatever rig you use, make terribly certain that you break your horse gently to it; don’t hustle him, as that will hurt him, panic him and worst of all, make him allergic to the rig.

At the end of the day, it must be understand that mere apparatus is no real substitute for correctness of riding. You should take the trouble of comprehensively inquiring into any lunging aid you are planning to acquire, finding out how it operates and work it in the recommended manner. This will make your lunging sessions with your horse much more fruitful and give you both something helpful to work on together.

Horses are Heather Toms passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers, like all things about western clothes