Teaching Your Horse To Sidepass!!!

Do you ever wonder how to teach your horse to side pass or maybe you're having issues? Well today I'm going to show you. Okay so before you start working on the side passing you want to make sure that your horse is soft in his face and is hind end. So just kind of like the lead video I did, I'm going to make sure Lenny is giving his face to me and you can get him walking around responding to the pressure. Same thing on this side. You're Cody in the background. Make sure he's giving his face and then I'm going to do the same thing with his hips. Move his hips around. You can kind of bump off his face if you need to and then go the other way. Move his hips around that way too. I'm going to bump on him. He's kind of being lazy. A little bit more in the front. So I'm just kind of warming him up by making sure all of his body parts are responding to me. His head, his back, his side, everything. I want him to be giving to my pressure when I put that leg on. It's really hard to teach a horse that is extremely stubborn when you go to put leg pressure on and they don't want to move. It's a whole lot easier to get a horse that is sensitive. Lenny is pretty sensitive so this is why I'm using him for this example. If you have a stubborn horse, the first thing you need to do is make sure they're going off of your leg pressure. When you put that leg on, they move away from it. So that would be my best advice for stubborn horses. Okay, so if you have a horse, never side pass, don't know what to do, don't know where to start. If you have a rail like such, then you're going to just simply go walk up to the rail, apply your leg pressure. The rail is really good because it stops your horse from keep going because a lot of times you put your leg on, the horse is like, okay I gotta go. In this case, the horse doesn't have anywhere to go. You're going to put the leg pressure on whichever leg you want. You want to put, think about pushing your leg towards the horse and whichever leg is on, the horse should be going away from the pressure. So in today's video, I'm going to be putting my right leg on which means he should be side passing to the left. I'm going to kind of hold his head up a little bit so he's not trying to turn. You don't want his body to be turning. You want it to stay pretty straight. If they're crooked, that's fine. They're learning. It's not, it doesn't have to be perfect and you're going to want to take baby steps. Release when they give you what you want, okay? So I'm going to go ahead and show, get my reins adjusted. I'm just going to walk straight up to this rail and I'm going to apply my right leg and he wanted to kind of keep going. I'm going to just hold him back, make sure he's staying straight and just keep holding my leg. Okay, so now I want you to watch this leg as I'm side passing him towards the camera right now because my left leg comes off. You want to think about opening that door for him. Don't have this leg squeezing on or he's going to think, go for it, okay? So I'm opening this leg. I'm applying my right leg right now and he just moves over. Now if he's a little antsy, he wants to go to the left or go to the right, you just stop. Keep his head straight and in the beginning, it's very important not to ask for too much. So you might want to just take one step, release. Head on him. Let him know you're a good boy. Relax for a second and ask for a step. Step, release. And it's not going to look this easy. Lenny does know how to side pass already. He kind of knows what we're doing here. So it's not going to be that pretty. You might have issues and it might be perfect for a stride. Who knows? I'm going to do the same thing going this way. Another thing that you can do, like if walking straight on the rail doesn't work, I'm going to show, I'm going to be walking straight on the rail just like I would be in a regular marine, maybe like in a rail class or something. I'm just walking nice along the rail and then I'm going to turn his head a little bit and just ask him to move his body over. This way, it's kind of the same idea except you're not going to be so straight. You are going to be a little bit more crooked, but that's fine. That's not the whole point. It's just to get one step at a time and then build as you go. Every time you come out, you should be able to do a few steps more. Hold it a little bit longer. Don't ask for too much because when you start asking for too much, that's when your issues go. Now we're not super straight, but we're going. We're going somewhere. Now I'm going to move my leg back a little bit, straighten him up. Now we're side passing. I'm holding my hands nice and steady. Okay, now if this is your first time side passing, don't ask for so much. Lenny knows how to do this, so I wanted to make sure he's getting straight before I rewarded him. If this is your first time and your horse just takes a half step, reward him. Stop, head on him, let him know you did good, try again. And then each time you can do it a little bit more, a little bit more, until you've got a good side pass. Okay, another thing also before you go and side pass in the saddle, which is what I showed in this video, I want you to check out my groundwork basics video. I'll try to link that in the description. And that would be a good video for you to watch before watching this one, because I teach you how to side pass on the ground. So that way if the horse has never done this before and you're just wanting to hop on and do it, I would suggest you do that first so they know what you're asking of them on the ground. And it's a lot easier to teach before you get to doing it on the horse.