Educating a green horse

[c_and_b]

I am currently helping a friend at my yard out in exercising and schooling her 5 year old Connemara x gelding. Between me, his owner, and his sharer, there have recently been 3 of us riding and schooling him. He has had barely anything done with him so needs a lot of schooling, we have only really been schooling him in walk and trot at the moment and he can be very nappy, but he is very willing to learn and is almost there with his walk. Anyway, the question I wanted to ask was, what would be the best methods of teaching him the correct way of going, as it were, that the 3 of us could all use in order to bring him on. I just wanted to know good training exercises to help stop the napping, establish his paces and eventually get him working in an outline. I know these will probably differ from person to person but I just wanted some of your opinions

 

[Charlie Bucket]

Hi!
I also have a 5 year old, and I will warn you it is ALOT of hard work, but when you achieve a goal...nothing beats that feeling!!

You said you've been doing work in walk and trot, what sort of things have you been doing? This is the best way to start though..so many people rush through the paces and start jumping, before the horse can even balance itself.

I would do a lot of working long and low, encouraging the horse to stretch and work over its back. Getting him forward is also important, as a horse with no impulsion will usually end up on the forehand.

Also..balance!! I found as my horses balance improved, the napping was a lot easier to eliminate. If he drifts off to the right, keep a good contact in the right rein, and push him with the right leg back over - i find just carrying a schooling whip down the shoulder really discourages him too.

Helping also with napping, is a simple pole excercie...say for a 20m circle, on each "side" put two poles adjacent to each other, with enough room to walk your horse through. Make sure you pass through the poles each time you go around your circle. This makes it a lot easier to tell if you are drifting!!

And the main thing, make sure all 3 of you are CONSISTENT!! If you all ride him with different methods, he will just be confused.

Anyways..hope some of this helped!! Good luck with your baby!

 

[c_and_b]

Literally just been circles and turns for the past few weeks, just to get him used to being schooled

 

[dafthoss]

I'd start with getting a consistent rhythm and then work on straighness. I've started riding a very green small pony and we are just working through all his evasions and keeping him straight which is a demanding task for him. Plenty of praise and breaks when he has done well and then back working again. Just really simple stuff but when your riding something that finds cantering a 20m circle as hard as he does then it has to be simple the main focus at the moment is getting the correct bend through his ribcage and neck and him not getting in a strop and chucking me off in the corner (his favourite trick when he feels he has done enough work or its getting a bit hard). We are mainly work on the walk and trot at the moment and just doing a small ammount of canter at the end once we have him working well. Although I did have to teach him to leg yeild in walk to help him understand the moving away from the leg sideways rather than just running off which has helped him bend much better.

Yours might be a bit diffrent if he's not so evasive and stroppy though. Good luck I love connies the one in my sig is my connie.

 

[Alyth]

Personally I would be VERY wary of doing too much schooling in an enclosed area......variety is the spice of life and cross training is invaluable. With my 5 year olds I have always "schooled" while hacking. This varies the environment and enables you to take advantage of every opportunity. Riding up piles of dirt, jumping up little banks, half circles and go in the other direction, leg yielding to the centre of the road, .....and back onto the verge...walking through puddles or across ditches. Horses get very bored very quickly, especially youngsters!!! If the horse can see the reason for a manoevre you have his brain.....like using a bush to leg yield around for example....And don't forget basic learning, like getting him to line up to you when you are sitting on a gate so you can mount easily....IMO it is more important to make everything interesting for him than "correct". Correct will happen when he is interested!!! Good luck.