HOW TO SLOW A FAST HORSE DOWN 🐎

Welcome. Today we're going to be talking about slowing a fast horse down. I'm here with Crosby who's the handsome thoroughbred and I thought he'd be a perfect horse to work with today because he's a little bit more forward and if you've got a horse like him these tips that I'm going to give you today will hopefully help you out. So I'm going to be covering three different exercises and three different factors that can influence your horse speeding up. So let's jump into it. So the first one that I want to talk about is getting your horse to accept your aids and be relaxed with them. So your aids are your seat, your legs, and your reins and you can see right there when I asked Crosby to stop up here he went to kind of lean forward and tense a little bit, chew on the bit, so that's kind of a sign that he is not fully accepting the aids. Now why is this important? When we slow a horse down we're starting to slow down our body and our seat here and we want the horse to understand that as our seat slows down as we relax he needs to relax. Doing your basic walk to stop is a great way to start doing this work with your horse. So one thing that I do at my stop to help Crosby here relax and be a little more accepting of my aids, I'm just going to walk him up a little bit, is to have him stand and just give a little bit to my reins here. So you can see if he wants to back up I just keep my leg on a little here and just with very gentle pressure ask him to relax and to give his jaw a little bit here. So as soon as he softens his jaw and relaxes, there you can see him start to kind of pull on that bit and get away from that pressure. I'm just gently waiting till he relaxes a little bit and gives that. So there again he pulled, he's kind of chewing a bit, so it takes a little bit of patience and persistence here and I just wait for him to soften and give. Right there he started to soften a little bit, ask again, there's a little bit of that resistance, a little bit of worry there. So I just wait on him, just kind of gently close my legs, I feel him back up. I'm just communicating that I don't want him to back up, I just want him to relax and give his jaw right there. So there he relaxed and gave to me. So I reward him for that and that tells me he's a little bit more accepting of staying with me in this space, willing to give to those reins. So then I reward him by letting him just walk out of this. What a good boy. The next thing we're going to talk about is our timing. Timing is a really important aspect of riding in general and is very critical when it comes to slowing a horse down. I'm going to be using a really basic walk to trot transition to talk about timing, demonstrating with Crosby here in a minute. But as we go into this, what's important to remember with your timing is it's really all about being able to feel things before they escalate. So if I have a horse that's going to speed up, he's going to run faster, he's always going to start with kind of building into that and going faster and faster. So if I can walk for a minute, feel him start to get a little pacey and then bring him down, have him relax, go up again and do those transitions, not only am I getting him more responsive to me and improving my timing, but I'm also getting to a place where I'm able to learn as a rider how to feel when things are starting to escalate and shut them down before they get too out of hand. So I'm walking Crosby. As I come across here, I'm going to ask for the trot and I know he's going to probably speed up in the trot, so I'm going to slow my seat almost right away. So I'm going to ask for the transition up. He's going to start. He's going to want to pick up. So I'm going to relax, support a little with my legs and just think about keeping a nice steady pace with my post here. So I'm counting that rhythm to slow him down a little and supporting him through these turns. So let's say again that he goes to go get a little bit quick here and start to run off a little bit. Then I'm going to slow down, start to balance him by counting my pace again and just do a little walk transition to calm him down. So I'm going to slow again. When he lands to the walk, we're going to walk a few strides together. Let him relax a second and then I'm going to ask for the upward transition again. Just go for a shorter distance this time since he was a little tense and then walk again. So if your horse is really tensing and wanting to run off like that, you can do these transitions in a shorter period like I did there. I'm not letting him trot as long. So I'm just trotting a little ways and then right away bringing him down to walk and relaxing again and then again trotting a little ways and then slowing and coming right down to walk. Good boy. And this is helping your horse to relax and stay more focused because when he's getting into that kind of speedy mindset, he's leaving you mentally and he's going into the state of I'm just running. So the more that you can do those transitions in a short period like that, the more you're keeping his attention and helping him to relax more. Lastly, we're going to talk about the importance of our position. Your position plays an important role in being able to slow your horse down. So here I'm riding Crosby around on a circle, which is a wonderful exercise to slow your horse down. And I'm working on keeping my body nice and centered over him, stretching up nice and tall with my hands quiet. And I'm also working on keeping a little bit of weight here in my outside stirrup to counter the balance. This makes it easier for Crosby to carry me around. Now in this example, I've changed my position and now I'm leaning in. And you can see how this negatively influences Crosby. He's having to speed up and also lean himself in a little bit, fall out on the circle to compensate for me being off balance like this. So when we're working our horses, keeping our position correct and centered really makes it easier for our horse to carry us. And this helps him to relax and slow up the pace more. So there's a lot of reasons why your horse could be speeding up. Some of those could include that he's just a very forward horse, like Crosby here. It could be that he is out of balance and lacking in some strength. It could be that he's just nervous on that particular day. But whatever reason your horse is speeding up, I hope that these three different ideas help you out. Really thinking about your timing with your horse, your horse's accepting of the aids, and how your position is influencing him. And by using these different tools in whatever exercise you choose to slow your horse down, you'll be able to get his attention back and get him back to that relaxed state of being able to slow his paces back up again. So I hope you keep enjoying your horses over this next week. You keep growing and learning, and I'll see you in the next video.