A Cue From The Horse

Monday, November 17th, 2008 | Horse Training Tips

We are constantly cueing our horses and expecting them to listen to us, but do we listen to their cues?

A cue from a horse during ground work is the foreshadowing of the kind of behavior they will display while you are riding. Those of you who are familiar with my riding program know that a large part of my training takes place on the ground.

A big thing I see with many problem horses is that they just didn’t get enough work. Generally horses don’t want to be bad they just can’t always think straight. A horse who is built to travel 20 miles per day every day starts to get stir crazy when he doesn’t get enough work. How many of our horses go even 10 miles per day? Not too many that I know of. Problem horse’s are not always really a problem, the pent up energy that they have is the problem.

There are cues that a horse can give you to show you he’s not ready to be ridden. I always longe first, and I never longe mindlessly it always has purpose. All horse’s are different, so you will have to figure out what the tell tale signs are with your specific animal.

Here are a few cues your horse may give you indicating he is not yet ready to work:

Head tossing or head shaking
Bucking (No mystery there!)
Horse does not pay attention
Chewing or mouthy
Tense jaw
Acting tired or extremely lazy
Picks up the wrong lead at the lope

The extremely lazy symptom, that’s Perry. She’s the Liver Chestnut Horse in most of the pictures around the blog. She is my favorite lesson horse, and my favorite horse of all time. When I take her out to longe, if I have to chase her with the whip and she is acting like she has no energy that is actually when she has a lot of pent up energy. If I put a beginner rider on her because “she’s tired anyway” she will definitely spook at something. Those times when she is “tired” upon a little extra prodding she ends up flying around (scaring the beginners) and burning off tons of pent up energy you would never have known was there.

Each horse is different so you have to pay attention to what the cue is from each horse.

The best way to see your horse’s cue is to watch from the ground. The ground is where you learn the most about the horse and in the saddle is where you learn the most about riding.

What are some of your horse’s cues?

Tags: horse psychology, horse training

1 Comment to A Cue From The Horse

Stress Needs an Outlet | Deanna Castro’s Professional Horse Blogazine
November 18, 2008

[...] my last post A Cue From The Horse I spoke about figuring out when your horse has too much pent up energy. In this post I would like [...]

Pet Cost Calculator is brought to you by money.co.uk cheap pet insurance.

Know Your Money

A sick horse is never an easy thing to go through and is anything but cheap. Check out Know Your Money some time. You can compare pet insurance rates between several companies and keep your thoroughbred healthy.

HOME | ABOUT ME | RIDING ACADEMY | CLASSIFIED ADS | CONTACT ME | MEMBERS