IN HAND WORK WITH HORSES | 3 EXERCISES 🐴

We're going to be talking about working your horse in hand. Working your horse in hand is a wonderful way to build their strength and flexibility without the weight of a rider and help them be more responsive when it comes to their under saddle work. I'm going to be giving you three exercises today that you can do with any horse at any level to help improve their flexibility. So let's get started. Good boy. So the first exercise that we're going to be doing here is working on lateral work. And lateral work is a wonderful way to improve your horse's flexibility on the ground here. It helps you with side passing, leg yielding, and eventually half passing under saddle. So I'm going to walk you through the steps of how to start this off. The first step is you want to make sure your horse is totally comfortable with the whip. So I see the whip as an extension of my arm. I want my horse to be completely relaxed, not afraid of it at all, and completely comfortable. So let's see how we do that. So to introduce the whip, I'm going to stand at my horse's shoulder here, and I'm going to start by just rubbing him over his back like this. And I'm going to work my way over his back and down his legs, under his belly, and just all over his body. Now if he were to move around and get worried at any time here, I would just keep rubbing him until he stopped and relaxed, and then take the whip away, put it back on him, until eventually he gets to the place where Sonic is here, where he's totally relaxed with the whip. So you can see how I can rub Sonic all over here, and he's completely calm with the whip, and shows no signs of distress. So now I'm ready to start doing a little bit of handwork with him. So I'm going to start by finding my position, which is right here at the point of the shoulder, and then I'm going to organize my rein and whip. As I organize my rein and whip, I'm going to start with my left hand. I want to hold my thumb up on my left hand like that, and I want to hold relatively close to the bit. So I can kind of work in this range, or a little closer, but I don't want my hand to be too far back like this, because I have less control. Moving on to my right hand, I want to hold my rein and my whip in this position right here. Now when I started in handwork, I had my rein and whip in this position, which I commonly see, but I found that I have more control if I hold my whip like this. So to find this position with your whip, you're going to put your hand through the reins, pointer finger forward and thumb up. You're going to set your whip down in between your pointer finger and your thumb here, and curl your pointer finger, set your thumb over the top to secure that just like that. And you can see that my whip is off my horse, so I'm not accidentally hitting him as I work with him. And then I turn my wrist here to touch him with the whip. This gives me really good accuracy on where I want to touch, and allows me to release easily. Now when it comes to my reins, I want to be able to start with my right rein here, which is my outside rein. To correct him, I'm going to be sliding that hand down to release. I'm going to slide up. So again, correct, and there's release. Inside rein, I'm going to go up to correct, and down to release. So now we know that our outside rein, to correct our horse, we're going to be sliding it down to correct, up to release. Inside, we know we got to pick up this way to correct, and bring it down to release. When we go to move our horse laterally to start this exercise, we want to imagine that he's inside a box. So there's a wall here, there's a wall here, and one directly behind him. So the only door that's open is that way. So as I do this, I've got just these two basic tools. I've got a one that says go forward, and one that says slow down, or whoa, which are my reins here. And when he's balanced between those two tools, or those two aids, he's going to move laterally. So we're going to start this movement off by standing here at his shoulder. I'm going to touch him with the whip and encourage him to go forward a bit. When he starts going forward, I'm going to pick up with my hand here to let him know to not go any more forward than that, and then release him when he crosses over. A little touch with the whip if he stops. And at the beginning, it might not be pretty, he may move around or want to go past you, just be patient. You know, there you can see him back up a little bit, and just let your horse kind of figure it out. So there he had some really nice steps, so then I'm going to slide up and reward him for that. What a good boy. So now we're going to move on to talking about our next exercise. So now we've done our lateral work with our horse, we've had him move more sideways like this, and our next exercise we're going to be having him step his shoulders around like this. So his hind end is staying pretty still, and his front end is pivoting around like that. And this is going to help to improve your horse's shoulder flexibility, and it's going to help your horse to be able to sit back more onto the hind end. So the position is the same as it was before as far as our reins and our whip go, but the difference is when I was moving my horse laterally, I was here, and when I'm moving his shoulders, I'm going to be more in front of him. So I'm thinking about this more of as a circular motion, so we're going to be moving in an arc, and I'm going to stay right in front of this front leg. So as he steps it over, I'm going to keep walking a little in front of it to block him from going forward. So I'm going to ask him to walk a little forward here, step in front, release him every time he steps over, just like that. And you can see how Sonic really has to sit back and find his balance there to make that crossover, so it's a great exercise to help him with that awareness. Now when you start doing this exercise, your horse may struggle with getting a very deep cross or keeping those hind legs as still and want to move around, so as you start doing this, just do a little at a time. If he's struggling to cross, have him cross a little bit and then walk him out of it and give him a break, and each day build to being able to do a more and more complete circle. When Sonic started doing this, he really struggled, but you can see now after breaking it down a little at a time, it's really pretty easy and smooth for him. So in our final exercise, I'm going to be focusing on getting this inside hind leg to be more mobile and to step more underneath my horse. This is going to help to strengthen that inside hind and increase its flexibility. So I'm going to be doing this by changing my position to facing my horse's hind end like this, so you can think my belly button is pointed towards his inside hip. I'm going to hold my rein and whip in the same way I was holding it before. I'm going to send him forward and I'm watching this inside hind leg to step under and his belly here and cross over. I'm going to let him go in a circle around me, so I'm going to send him forward using my outside rein to control that outside shoulder, and if he slows that hip down, I'm just doing a little tap right there to encourage him to step it more underneath, and right here you can see how he's crossing that hind leg over, and he's got a little bit less crossing going on in the front, so that inside hind is a little more active than the inside front leg is going in a smaller circle. So when you guys are practicing these exercises, remember to take your time and do them a little bit at a time. It's very common we start these off for a horse to really not cross very well, whether that's moving sideways, moving the front end, or moving the back end, so build to those deeper crosses and give your horse lots of breaks and rewards. When you're doing this work, it's going to help your horse, not only is it going to help in your riding to help him understand how to move away from your pressure better and be softer in your aids, but it's also going to help him to be able to think through different problems. I love working horses on the ground because it gives them a new perspective and really helps me to be able to understand a little bit more about them and them to build a relationship with me a little bit better. So I hope this video was a help to you, and I hope that you keep enjoying your horses over this next week. I'll see you in the next video!