Good afternoon this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today I am here with Dave Murphy and his horse Zoey. You have all seen Zoey on previous videos, and today she is about 5 or so months into training with Art2Ride. I come about once a week to help Dave out.

One of the things that we are talking about with this horse that I want you to see and understand is until you ride a horse much, the horse has to be accepting contact with the bridle. If you were to read the old Spanish riding school manual for instance, they would lunge a horse for a year before they rode it. As you can see in the video Zoey’s mouth now has a nice foam forming around the edge of her lips, which tells you that the horse is mouthing the bit correctly and not over mouthing the bit. Your horse shouldn’t be dripping saliva out of it’s mouth like some mad foaming dog, which we see in some horses that have over-tight nose bands on.

Earlier today we were talking about back development and if you were to go back and look at some earlier tapes of this horse, you would’ve noticed that she was quite dipped through the back and fat in the belly and didn’t come up. When we look at her now after these months of teaching her to stretch down and take contact with the bridle, we see how lovely she goes down into that and how her belly is now pulling up. You can see the line there along her abdominal wall, which also tells us that the horse is pulling up through the back. Look how nicely stretched she is over her topline.

She got a little excited there when a car drove by but Dave is just going to send her on. Once again, this is a horse that when we started training her even a car going by would send her into a fit of bucking, leaping around, and crazily bolting forward. Now when she comes out you can hear her blowing out there, which is a sign that tells us the horse is relaxing as it’s going.

If it were me, I would never ride a horse until it’s mouth gets to this point and has accepted contact with the bridle. People get on too soon and the mouth is wide open with the horse panicked and frightened. Imagine if you had a piece of metal stuck in your mouth and someone was trying to force you to do something with it, you can only imagine how you would react,  horses are the same way. I have seen so many accidents with young horses, horses that have flipped over on top of people or jumped through fences because they were in such a panic about the first time feeling someone jerk them on their mouth.

This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride with Dave Murphy and his horse Zoey. Keep having fun with your horses and they will too! Thanks for watching and we will see you next time!

Back Development classical foundation contact Dave Murphy foam lunging relaxation ride San Diego horse training Will Faerber Zoey