The Art of Knowing When to Jump Ship

The other day I was listening to two horse trainers have a discussion about their training techniques. One had a background in natural horsemanship, the other in dressage. They were discussing what to do with a horse when they acted up. It went something like this:

“If they start to get unfocused or spooky, I disengage the hind end right away,” said the natural horsemanship trainer.

“What does that do?” asked the dressage trainer skeptically (because dressage trainers are skeptical of anything a natural horsemanship trainer has to say).

“It snaps their attention right back to you. If you can get them swinging their hind end around, then they have to listen and they can’t spook or take off.”

“Oh, well when my horse starts to act up I get him collected and do a bunch of transitions on a serpentine.”

They continued to talk about the pros and cons of stopping a horse and making it turn to disengage the hind end versus pushing them forward into the bridle and collect. I nodded along, not really picking a side, and eventually they agreed to disagree and left it at that.

I told you that so I can tell you this. Yesterday I was riding a connemara/QH in the outdoor ring. I could tell the minute I got on she was going to be frisky, and my right leg had no more swung over the saddle than she started trotting. I brought her back, did a few leg yields to get her moving laterally off from my leg, and went to work. Since she wanted to go forward I let her go forward. We did serpentines, diagonals, circles, and figure eights all at a smooth collected trot. I focused on switching the bend constantly – left, right, left, right, straight, left, right – to keep her focused on me instead of the scary things lurking in the corners (I’m moving those damn white cones tomorrow!) and a few extensions and collections down the long sides. Foolishly thinking she was now going to be well behaved, I let her take a walk break before going into some canter work.

Within five seconds of walking on a loose rein she did a half rear, spun, and took off like a rocket across the middle of the ring. As we were flying through the mud and the dirt, I had an instant flashback to the discussion I had overheard the day before and I panicked.

Should I make her slam on the breaks and make her disengage her hind end or should I get back to a trot and collect?


Disengage hind end?


Collect trot?


Disengage?


Collect?

AHHHHHHHHH!

Thankfully years of Pony Club training kicked in and I did a quick pulley rein to the right, cutting off her wild bolt mid leap. Because this particular horse has a history of rearing straight up in the air I didn’t bring her to a complete stop; as soon as I had regained control I pushed her forward into the bit and did a nice twenty meter circle. Then, swallowing my pride, I hopped down, took off the bridle and the saddle, and set her loose.

When she immediately jumped straight into the air like a jack rabbit and proceeded to go into a series of top over tea kettle bucks that would have made a bronco horse proud, I knew I had made the correct decision: when in doubt, hop down and free lunge the shit out of them.

She tore around the ring like a maniac for about ten minutes or so while I stood in the middle, patiently waiting. When her gallop dropped down to a canter I used my body language to get her to change directions in a big looping figure eight down the center of the ring. We did the 8 a few times, and then did some up/down transitions. Any time she tossed her head or bucked I waved my hands in the air and made her run. When I was satisfied she had worked the kinks out, I signaled for her to come in the middle. She began a slow circling descent in, kind of like an airplane getting ready to land, but when she popped her shoulder to the outside and threw her head, I made her run around some more. I began to ask for her to change direction more rapidly on the short side. Canter left, hit the corner, rollback, canter right, hit the corner, rollback, canter left. On the fourth turn I asked her to come in again. This time she came flying towards me, did a sliding stop about ten feet out, walked the remaining distance, and stood huffing and puffing with her head down at knee level. I gave her a pat, put her tack back on, and we went on a short trail ride around the outside of the pasture.

The lesson learned? Sometimes it doesn’t matter what your background is. If the horse is going to do crazy leaps in the air either way, I would always rather be on the ground than in the saddle. Getting off isn’t giving up – it’s just taking another route to the same destination... unless of course you're this rider, in which case you are awesome and laugh in the face of bucking/rearing/bolting/anything bad a horse could possibly do.