Terrible Twos Tuesday
Let your horse tell you when they are ready to move on to the next phase.
Your horse will speak to you constantly, you just have to know how to listen to them. You need to listen with your eyes!
Here is a short video showing two of my breakers.
Bumble is totally not ready to move past this stage. Can you see the signs that he is unsure of what I am doing? He is lifting his head and looking around with wide eyes and turning his ears around to try and listen to me. He is moving his feet around me. And just generally isn’t 100% relaxed. It’s his first time doing this so his response is expected. Once he is more comfortable with this I will move on to the next stage which is putting my foot in the stirrup and jumping up and down putting just a small amount of pressure on the stirrup.
Phoenix as you can see is super relaxed and doesn’t have a care in the world. He is happy for me to move on to the next stage which is mounting him.
I refuse to move to the next stage until the horse is ready. Every horse is different and some can go through this process in a few days, some can take weeks before they are ready for me to hop on. And there is nothing wrong with that. We have to accept them for how they are and work with them and build a trusting relationship with us.
Every child learns to walk at a different age and different pace and we are ok with that, we continue to keep encouraging them and build their confidence up in themselves. So when you are working with your young horses try and treat them like you would while supervising a young child learning to walk.