HOW TO STOP A HORSE PULLING ON THE REINS 🐴 🤔

Today we're going to be talking about a horse that pulls on the reins. He's pulling the reins out of your hands. If you've ever had this experience you know it can be a really frustrating one and a scary one if you have a horse that's throwing their head up and kind of running away with you or throwing their head down and running away with you and pulling those reins out of your hands. So I'm going to be working with Dallas today. He has a little bit of an issue of pulling on the reins so we're going to take a look at what he's doing and then we're going to talk how to solve it. So here I'm riding Dallas around a turn and right here you can see him go to pull those reins out of my hands. So when your horse is pulling like this it's called rooting. So why is our horse pulling on the bit when we're riding? There's two different types of horses that can pull on the bit. One is the horse that's rooting like Dallas where they're pulling down to pull the reins out of your hands and the other one is where they're throwing their head up and pulling the reins out of your hands. So in both these cases there's a few kind of core reasons why the horse could be pulling. The first one and the easiest one to solve the one I like to eliminate first is pain. So if the horse has you know his teeth are not done and he's got some sharp edges that could be causing him some discomfort with his bit. If he has a bit that's not fitting him well, if he has a saddle that's not fitted to him so you want to check your saddle make sure it's by professional or if he's got some back pain going on. So eliminating that the physical pain element is a really important place to start with most behavioral issues and throwing the head or pulling on the reins is no different. So now let's talk about the other reasons why your horse could be pulling the reins out of your hand. The first one is that the horse is anxious and he doesn't understand how to give to the reins. So no one has properly educated him on how to give to the rein pressure and be soft and relaxed and confident with the reins or with the bit. The second reason is that the horse has learned that when he pulls the reins out of your hands he gets a release of pressure so it's a learned behavior. He did it a few times and then it became a habit. In both of these cases we're going to be addressing it the same way. So with Dallas here it's a learned behavior so I'm going to walk you through the steps now of how I'm going to address this behavior with Dallas. So you can see there's two images up on the screen here and these two images are the two different ways we can ask our horse to give to the rein pressure and that's the first step to teaching him to stop pulling. So here I'm asking him to give laterally to the rein doing lateral flexion on the left and then here on the right I'm asking him to give vertically doing vertical flexion and right there you can see him give to me. So the first step is to teach the lateral flexion. Now we go into teaching the lateral flexion we want our horse to be giving to that right hand so I'm asking with my right hand here and you can see right there he pulls down and goes to pull the reins out of my hands. So I just hold nice and patient and when he gives I reward him. Now on the left same thing I'm going to hold nice steady pressure and you can see here I turns his head away and starts to pull a little bit against that pressure so I just stay nice and patient and wait for him. Right here he pulls a little harder again just staying nice and patient just waiting keeping my pressure nice and consistent and right there he gives to me so I reward him. Now this is after working on it for a little bit and you can see how quickly Dallas gave to that pressure and stay nice and relaxed mouth was nice and closed and he looks very calm and this is what we're looking for as we work on this that we can get to the place where our horse just gives nicely and remains really relaxed. So I'm asking him to give on this side and then once we get to this stage we're going to then move to under saddle and I'm just doing this at a standstill I'm not looking for him to bend his head around very far or very quickly I just want to see that he understands to give and he's really calm about it and accepting of that gentle pressure. So right there was really nice and I just check in with him again and right there was really good. Next we're going to work on teaching vertical flexion so here I have gentle pressure where I'm lifting up a little bit and you can see how Dallas is pulling down against that pressure so I'm just being patient kind of following with my hands here and I'm just waiting I'm not pulling hard here I'm just holding and waiting for him to quiet his mouth and relax and then after working with him a little bit got to this place where I could apply that pressure and he would just give at his jaw there and keep his mouth closed and stay nice and relaxed. So I'm going to do that again see we got a nice quiet mouth I apply some gentle pressure and he gives nicely and then I reward him so now I'm going to do this under saddle with him I'm going to keep my legs supporting him and just ask him to give here with some gentle pressure and there he gives I'm going to reward him and just repeat that one more time so legs on a little gentle pressure and that was really nice. So now that we've talked about how to teach our horse to bend both laterally and vertically we've done this on the ground under saddle let's talk about how long this may take your horse. Every horse is a unique individual but for me on average I find it takes around a month of doing this three days a week before you can break that habit and turn that horse from pulling to a place where they're giving consistently for you. So remember to just stay patient with your horse through this process as he's learning and just keep sticking with it to help him out. Now let's talk about us as the rider what do we need to do if we have a horse that is pulling the reins out of our hands when we're under saddle. So first let's talk about the most common thing that we can do or we usually do when a horse pulls. So what's natural for us when a horse pulls is to try to pull the head up and we typically do that by bending our arms and trying to pull with our arms like this and when we do that our center of gravity shifts forward our butt comes up out of the saddle and the horse can pull us right out of that saddle. So in order to be able to be softer help the horse out and also be more secure and balanced we want to go through these steps. So we want to first make sure that our core is engaged and we've got good contact with our seat bones here. We then want to open up our collarbones and drop our shoulders and we want to close our legs we're just hugging our horse with our leg here so I'm not squeezing up but I'm wrapping my lower leg my calf around my horse and I'm riding out to my hands so if my horse goes to pull and pull me down a little bit just move Dallas up here I want to think about trying to get that hind end to come up underneath me and to connect more to the front end so you can see how when I have my leg closed like this I'm able to get Dallas to step up to me a little bit more and to give to my hands. So whenever a horse is pulling it's often because the hind end isn't coming through enough so the more you can focus on riding from back to front the softer and more relaxed your horse is going to be. So I hope this video is a help to you if you have a horse that is pulling if it was remember to like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.