Help with lazy horse

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smelly ginger

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I need some advise with with my horse :) He's a 7 yr old ex racer and I've had him around 18 months.

He's lovely and calm, but can be extremely lazy at times! To get anything decent I have to use so muchy leg, by the time he's working properly my legs are dead!

He's fit (did pc camp and went galloping and hedge jumping yesterday, and he hardly broke a sweat under his saddle) and not over/under weight. He's fed 1 scoop of chaff and 1/2 scoop of d+h pasture mix, anymore and he gets silly.

I really need some help with this, it feels like I'm riding a donkey!

Thanks
 
I know exactly how you feel! A couple of months ago, my pony was really lazy, but, after reading some of the help pages in magazines, I think that the best way is to do lots and lots of transitions. I read somewhere that you should try to do 100 transitions in 25 mnutes. Try it- I have and my 5 yr old is his responsive self again :) I hope it works!
 
We do lots of transitions, lethening strides up the long sided and shortening down the short side, even going for a good blast around the field, but nothing really works to wake him up :(

The only way i can truly get him listening is giving him a good old smack on the backside, but i dont like doing this :( thankyou for the advise though, I'll try the 100 transition thing tomorrow :) xxx
 
Ask politely once

Ask again with more verve

Get Mr. Whippy out.

My backwards horse is now very much forward going after following this formula!!

Transitions are great. Lot's of walk - trot, trot - halt, halt - trot. Always back it up with a crop if he won't go off the leg. You are supposed to be working but he needs to put in the same, if not more, effort!!
 
I know exactly how your feeling! I had a welsh x tb and despite being fit and healthy and correct weight he just took a lot of effort to get which when he was going well was (if i do say so myself) amazing flatwork!

I couldnt feed him a high energy feed due to this bringing out his nervous side but one of the best decisions i ever made was feeding him alfa-a balancer, i cant explain what happened after feeding this for a few months and dont know whether it was a coincidence or not but everything clicked and i had got the best out of him i have ever had in the 6 years i owned him.

Other things in the school i did were riding in spurs once a week just to make listen that wee bit more, try doing different things (poles/cones/serpentines) and most of all see when i relaxed and stopped worrying about constantly making him move and had fun we enjoyed schooling and after 'waking up' we could get some more serious things out the way.

I also found riding him in the morning was more enjoyable after he had been stabled over night as he must have been having big Zs over night! We also started going out and competing more in the lorry and he seemed to enjoy being schooled home more, not sure if this is related!

Hope this helps!
 
Thanks guys! :)

I do use the whip quite a lot, especially when I need him to listen, eg xc, otherwise we'd both end up on the floor! I don't really like the thought of using it too much, but I'll give it a try.

He was fed alfa a last year and it set him mad. Yes he was a little more forward, but I couldn't be doing with all the random explosions, he was just so tense and the smallest thing would set off another rodeo impression. It was, to say the least, annoying! :P

I've never ridden in spurs, but I'll give it a try. I don't trust my self jumping in them though, he's a sensitive sole and if I accidentally jab him it'll set off another rodeo impression :/

It's funny, you'd of thought he'd be the opposite with his breeding and racing background, but he's so dosey, makes me laugh :D
 
I have a very lazy 17.2 warmblood and I'm sweating buckets after 30 min of schooling. I thought it was just me and got a couple of friends to ride him too, and yes he is lazy as! I've been having lessons for about 5 months now and it has been a wake up call to him as if he doesn't respond the second time after being asked to move off my leg, its tap of the whip time. We are getting there, but I have developed a terrible habit of nag, nag, nag over the years with him, which I'm finding hard to break. As my instructor says - the horse does what he/she wants to do 23 hours of the day, you are only asking an hour or so from them.....too true
 
Try 10 strides walk, 10 strides trot, repeat, repeat, repeat as necessary. That usually gets them moving. Then you can increase (if that's the right word) it to 5 strides each.
 
I feel your pain. Have just sweated buckets today schooling a lazy, supposedly amazingly bred ex-eventer who views moving too fast like my teenage sons - um no! He's great in canter, though. Walk and trot, however, are exhausting. Feel like I should get off and carry him around arena.
 
Mine is slightly different but might help. I have 2 section a's for my daughter they are a little green but lovely natured. One is fab, one is slow as and he doesn't care about the whip, he swerves/jumps sideways. So in a last ditch attempt, I hooked him up on a lead rope to my cob and did a lesson with him like that. He was all over the place to start with but doing it for an hour was enough to get him listening. On unclipping, he kept his pace up and stopped slowing up. Don't know if it is something that would work for you but I will do it again if required :) mean mummy that I am!lol
 
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