Good afternoon this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I thought I would give you a little update on Dave Murphy because we have gotten to a good place with her. Dave has been working with me once a week for a little over eight months. As you all have seen, Dave has learned to lunge his horse correctly and has come a long way!

When Dave first started riding this horse, the thing that I was immediately struck by was how uncomfortable she was carrying his weight. This horse really needed to work to build up enough strength to carry him. She certainly is big enough to carry him once she has been conditioned. What I wanted to point out today was how lovely and free her walk has become! I am no longer seeing the horse struggling to carry his weight, so that tells me that we are making good progress and we are ready to move on into other things.

Look how lovely she has become! This was a horse that was constantly spooking and just a car going by eight or nine months ago would have been enough to send her into a little spasm. Horses react when something is wrong, that is why we must remove all the pain. We must make sure that their feet are right, we must make sure that the saddle is right and we must make sure that we are stretching up and carrying ourselves and not letting ourselves collapse onto the back of our horses like a sack of potatoes. This is an athletic sport, you will never be a better rider than you are fit, just like any other athletic sport. The fitter you are the easier this will be. For example, I have a student who is fifty-one that used to be a gymnast and still has the body of a gymnast and when she got on the horse, in a few months time she was ready to go. She is out on a little rescue horse winning things all over the place and having a good time! So your physical fitness for the horse and yourself are so important! You need to stretch up and carry your weight so that the horse can carry you correctly.

Zoe has reacted there (shown in video) a little bit and something has bothered her but Dave is not going to make a big deal of it, he is going to leg yield her back over to where she was before and let her stretch her head and neck all the way down. That was really good because we got to see him react to something going on. Eight or nine months ago that would have been a giant spook and she would have taken off and bolted around the arena, now it is barely more than just bending her away. What Dave has realized is, when something goes wrong we keep the horse moving forward and just bend away, that is what the shoulder-in and the leg yields are for. Those are the most powerful tools to bring the horse back into the outside rein and back under control and away from what it may be thinking of.

Right here (shown in video) Dave is going to show you how that works. See how she started to look at something there? So Dave is going to stretch up trying not to get too rigid in his hands. If you let your hands get too rigid that will cause you problems. Be careful that you keep your hands like a pressure cooker, you have to keep them making contact but softening never becoming rigid. As soon as your hands become rigid, I can guarantee you that the horse is going to react in a bad way to them, so keep softening. She starts to spook again, so Dave is just going to put her into a little shoulder-in and a leg yield keeping his hands soft and letting her stretch back out again. That’s how you deal with this, without ever jerking on the horse, beating on her or turning it into a fight. Just put her into a shoulder-in and away you go.

Once again this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride with Dave Murphy and Zoey and we will see you next time on Art2Ride! Hope that helps!

classical foundation Dave Murphy developement leg yield rein San Diego horse training shoulder in spook Will Faerber