Teach A Horse to Stand Still While Mounting 😀

So if you have a horse you're going up to mount and he's walking away like this, it's going around the block, you're feeling like you're having difficulty getting him to line up, maybe you're able to get him lined up and then you go to finally get on he moves his hip away like this, or you get in the saddle and as you're getting in the saddle he's walking off on you. I'm going to be taking you through the steps of how to solve these issues. So the exercise that I'm going to be teaching you today you can see right here with Crosby is just teaching your horse to step up to the block and line up, teaching him to kind of side pass over there to the block. So when we're teaching our horse how to side pass to us we want to start the process of teaching using a halter and a line. Eventually we'll be doing this with a bridle but to teach it using the halter and line helps to keep us safe and gives the horse a little bit more room so that he's more relaxed in this teaching process and feels more comfortable. You're also going to be using a dorsage whip as an extension of your arm to help you be able to reach over and touch the horse's hindquarter as you teach him to come towards you. So the first step to this is teaching him to relax with the whip or making sure that he's relaxed with the whip. So I'm just going to ask Crosby to stand up here and I'm just going to take my whip and starting at his neck and shoulders I'm going to rub down his back, over his hindquarters and down his legs and I'm just making sure that he's not afraid of the whip. So if he moves around or he kicks up at it, swishes his tail, those are all signs of some anxiety and if I saw those signs of anxiety I would just keep rubbing him until he relaxed and then take the whip away. So if you want more details on desensitizing your horse and understanding that process more which is kind of what we're doing here is desensitizing with the whip, I'll leave a link down below to a video I did on desensitizing. So now let's move on to our next step. In this step we're going to be teaching our horse to side pass away from us. This is really important for safety reasons. When we teach our horse to side pass up to the block we also need to be able to move him away if he gets too close to the block where we feel like he's crowding us. So to teach this you're going to start by standing in front of the point of the shoulder here. You're going to take your whip and put it in the opposite hand of the direction you're going. So I'm going to be stepping Crosby over here to the left so my whip and my excess line is in my right hand. I'm going to hold under my halter and I'm going to direct Crosby a little bit over to the left with my left hand. So I'm pointing a little bit to the left then I'm going to tap him gently on his ribcage here until he steps over. When he steps over like that I'm going to step in front of him, apply a little gentle backward pressure with my left hand and move him back to reward him. So when I'm stepping him back like that I'm just preventing him from going past me. So one more time I'm going to stand up here at the point of the shoulder, direct Crosby's nose over to the left, touch him with my whip on his ribcage. When he steps over I'm going to release the whip, apply a little gentle pressure with my left hand to step him back. Now things that you can run into with this are first your horse can want to go past you, so if I were to apply pressure and Crosby were to walk straight forward I would just immediately walk into him and back him up, applying that pressure and release until he backed up and stood like that. And then I would repeat the cue. If he were to, I tapped him and he started backing up when I'm tapping him, which is the other thing that your horse can do, I would just simply turn and send him forward a step and return him back to standing. And if he's really backing I might take a minute just to rub him with the whip and help him relax. And then when you're teaching this you're just repeating it until you get to the place where you can touch your horse with a little bit of light pressure. You can see Crosby that like right here see how he's a little bit he's not quite moving I just gently keep tapping him and eventually I get to that place where I can just touch him and he just steps over just like that. Our next step is teaching our horse to come to us when we lift the whip. So we're going to start teaching this by lining our horse up to a wall and we're going to use the cue we just taught of moving the horse away. So I'm going to stand here in front of him like this. I'm going to eventually teach him to move into me this direction. So I'm going to start in front and I'm going to ask him to move away from me to begin. So I'm taking my whip over here on the opposite side and I'm going to touch him on the rib cage till he steps away. As he steps away like that I'm going to pick up my whip on this side. So I kind of crossed over and lifted my whip and then I would do that again touch him on this side. As he's stepping cross over pick up my whip and then when he steps over to me like that I release and reward him. Now over time after you're doing that a couple times you're going to be able to step away pick up your whip and touch your horse on the opposite hip and he should understand to come up to you. So right here you can see how Crasby understands that when I lift my whip like that he should come up to me and that's our goal. So we're working to the place we're on the wall he's confident and relaxed with that and then we're ready for our next step. So now we're ready to have our horse side pass up to us off the wall. So we use a wall to help prevent our horse from going forward when we're first teaching him to come to us. Now we want to see if he really understands this cue by taking the wall away and seeing if he still responds to the cue. If at any time he struggles we would just go back to the wall again. So I'm going to gather up my line here I'm going to pet Crasby and I'm going to just pick up my whip and see how well he understands this cue. So I'm lifting my whip just like I did earlier and seeing if he remembers the cue. There you can see him kind of turn towards me which is really good so I'm just going to gently touch him there lift the whip and there was really nice. So if he gives me a really nice response you notice he didn't walk forward he just came directly over which is what we're looking for. So I'm going to rub him there if he did walk forward a step I would just back in a step and repeat the cue. So once he is moving over to you with the whip like this you can lift your whip and he's stepping up to the whip you can replace that cue with your hand. So I'm going to set my whip down it just makes it easier obviously every time I mount my horse I may not have a whip around so I want to teach him to come up to my hand so I'm going to lift my hand here and if he didn't come up I would just tap him a little bit move back lift my hand again and you can see there how he comes up to my hand so I'm going to rub and reward him do that again lift my hand and there was really nice so I'm going to rub him and reward him. What a good boy Crasby. Now I'm ready to put his saddle and his bridle on and take him up to the block and we're going to see how this has helped us out with our mounting. So now I've got Crasby all tacked up and ready to mount I'm going to take him over to the mounting block first and see how he does with this so I'm going to step up onto my block raise my hand and ask him to step up to me and line up to the block just like that that was really nice now if he gets too close to the block let's say he came up too close I could just use my knee here and just apply a little pressure and he'll step away like that because we've already worked on that if he gets a little too far past me I can ask him to back up a step so it makes it really easy for me to adjust him around that block and then when I feel that he's in a good place I'll just hop on him and just reward him here and you notice he stands really nicely because his focus is on me so in doing this work I'm teaching him to bring his focus more and more on me and less on the environment and that as a byproduct of that he's going to stand more relaxed so if you were mounting your horse from the ground even let's say that he was tending to walk off and you were on the ground you could even use this without the block so I could just take a moment to ask him to come up to me here on the ground with my hand and then when he comes up I'm just going to rub in there position myself where I'm ready to hop on hop on and again he's going to have his focus more on me because we just worked on bringing his attention to me to do this movement of stepping over so I hope that this video is a help to you if you're working on teaching your horse to stand at the mounting block if it is let me know in the comments below I hope you enjoy your horses over this next week you have a wonderful week and I'll see you in the next video