basic skills 2.pdf

Basic Skills Two

Quick Reference Quide

Introduction ...........................................................................1

On line Skills

Skill #1 Ask your horse to circle to the right and left.........2

Skill #2 Cause your horse to move from a circle into a

sideways movement ................................................................3

Skill #3 Cause your horse to move sideways to the left

and right without using the fence ..........................................4

Skill #4 Cause your horse to squeeze between you and

the fence to the right and left .................................................5

Skill #5 Trailer loading .......................................................6

Ridden Skills

Skill #6 Bend your horse, yield the hindquarters and lead

the front end through .............................................................8

Skill #7 Walk Trot Transition .............................................9

Skill #8 At the canter show that you can yield your horse

to a stop................................................................................. 10

Skill #9 Back your horse a few steps ................................. 10

Skill #10 Yield your horse sideways a few steps .................. 11

S I I L V E R S A N D N A T U R A L H O R S E M A N S H I I P P R O G R A M M E

Introduction

Basic Skills 2 builds on the skills that you learned in the Basic Skills 1. If you

have not yet mastered these skills you will have great difficulty understanding

these next ten skills as they develop the “building blocks” (first ten skills) that

are in the last section. By now you and your horse should be confident about

the skills that you have already learned and you will hopefully have understood

how horses learn. This might be an oppotune time to go back and read the

section on the Model in the first set of notes as this is the foundation on which

we will build all new skills.

One of the important things to mention here is to be able to recognise the

smallest try our horse. If we have done a good job of preparing our horse in the

last section (Basic 1), there is a good chance that he will understand what we

want and he will hopefully try to work out what we want and move in this

direction. If he does not understand he may try to do lots of things in an attempt

to get comfort. This is where we need to have good timing and not stop while he

is doing something that is not what we want. Then stop instantly when he

makes any move in the right direction. We will need to remember the lessons

we have already learned about giving him time to think and repeat these skills

until he is confident about what we are doing.

The skills you are going to work on in this section will be focussing mainly on

confidence and yields.

S I I L V E R S A N D N A T U R A L H O R S E M A N S H I I P P R O G R A M M E

Ground Skills

Skill #1

Ask your horse to circle to the right and left

The goal here is to get our horse to confidently

circle to the right and left while we stand still.

This will be the end result, not the process.

We will start by asking our horse to follow

a suggestion in a forward direction as in

Skill 4 in the Basic 1 section, and then we

will slowly ask our horse to keep moving

forward as we slow our movement down.

This should result in our horse turning

around us as he reaches the end of the lead

rope and yields to the feel on the halter.

At first we would only ask for a small change of direction and then speed up

again ourselves and let him move back into a straight line. Each time we will

ask for a little more of a turn by slowing down our feet and asking our horse to

maintain his speed. It should not take long before we can walk a small circle

and our horse can walk a bigger circle around us. If he is too slow, we can

apply some energy behind him with our stick and string and maybe touch him

on the top of his tail if he does not understand our first suggestions to keep

moving. If he stops completely and has a problem understanding our cues go

back to moving in a straight line again and then start again. We would work on

this until we could make our circle smaller and smaller and could stand still,

turning on the spot and then eventually stand still and pass the rope behind our

back and have him continue to circle.

To stop our horse from a circle, we will wait until our horse passes in front of us

and his hip is in line with a point straight ahead of us. Then we would reach

down the lead rope with the hand on the side that is in his direction of travel and

tip his nose toward us a little as we put energy toward his hindquarters and

cause him to face us. If our horse was reactive or emotional we may have to

reach down the rope shorter and tip his nose in a lot more, putting a lot of

energy toward his hindquarters until he faces us. Hopefully this will not

happen, but it is good to know how to control this situation should it arise. We

would then repeat the process on the other side.

S I I L V E R S A N D N A T U R A L H O R S E M A N S H I I P P R O G R A M M E

Skill #2

Cause your horse to move from a circle into a

sideways movement

This skill is introduced when skill 1 is working

well. What we are trying to achieve here is

to get our horse to step laterally away

from us whilst still on the circle. This

will be very useful later in the saddle

and can be used to help soften a horse

laterally and also can be used for a

soft downward transition.

Once our horse is travelling in a circle

and we are turning with him, we will

focus our energy toward the horses

shoulder and push him out of the circle a step

or so. We may need to tap him on the shoulder

with our stick to achieve this. Once he can confidently take a step or so laterally

away from us (look for him crossing the front leg nearest you in front of the leg

furthest away from you) and then continue to walk forwards, we would ask for a

few more steps until we can push him out for several steps with him staying soft

and confident. We would then repeat this process in the other direction.

S I I L V E R S A N D N A T U R A L H O R S E M A N S H I I P P R O G R A M M E

Skill #3

Cause your horse to move sideways to the left

and right without using the fence

Skills 1 and 2 should have our horse

well prepared for this next skill.

We will start this by standing

in a position alongside our

horse facing his shoulder at

about the length of our

stick away from him.

Starting from a relaxed

position, we will then

stand up straight and bring

up our energy (life), step

toward the horses shoulder

and tap it with the stick, then

relax and wait (even if nothing

happened).

If our horse responded by moving

away sideways then all we need to do is

build on this a step at a time until he can confidently move for several steps

without stopping.

If he did not move at all the first time we asked, we would start again and this

time touch him harder on the shoulder and then stop and relax, letting him think.

We would repeat this until we got a response and then build on it. The other

thing that may happen is our horse may become worried and keep moving

forwards instead of sideways. If this happens we would push on the

hindquarters with energy to disengage the horse and stop the forward movement

and, as the horse comes to a stop, we would push on the shoulder again to move

the horse sideways. He may move forwards again instead but we would just

move the hindquarters out again to stop the forward movement and ask the

horse to move sideways again. This can take a lot of repetitions if the horse

becomes bothered and becomes impulsive, but we would just stay patient and

keep on setting things up for the horse to find the way out that we are looking

for.

This is a very important skill, so if our horse is impulsive, he will just rush

forwards instead of moving sideways away from pressure directed toward his

shoulder. We want our horse to be confident about this movement because it is

a real test of his emotional state (impulsiveness) and can tell us a lot about what

may happen when we are riding our horse.

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