How do I stop pony jogging but maintain impulsion?

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FinellaGlen

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I am trying to improve my canter strike offs by creating a lot of impulsion through walk/trot & trot/walk transitions. The only trouble is that my pony is now so onward bound when I ask for walk that I only get a couple of proper walk strides before she breaks back into trot.

I am not sure how to contain this energy. If I pull back she just goes faster so I think that taking up a softer contact might be the answer. Any advice please before my lesson on Friday? I want to use that time to improve the canter rather than spend half an hour teaching my pony to walk nicely............
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I will be watching this thread with interest as I also have a jogging little moster of a pony.

My instructor has pointed out that in our case it's an evasion of walking properly, and has told me to keep halting/half halting him until he gets the idea that he will only get to go forward in walk and that he has to do as he's told!!
 
Legs, legs and more legs.
Your pony needs to learn to walk properly first - practice by boringly following another fast walking horse/poney outside.
Use very little rein but constant leg contact/encouragment, also with your seat until he gets the hang of it. Then when he's learnt that lesson you can go onto the fancy stuff.

You have to be patient though, it could take weeks/months of practice to undo previously set habits.
 
Thanks TrecPeter. I think that reply was probably for bex1984? The thing with my pony is that she will will walk without any problems until I do a lot of transitions to "sharpen her up". She doesn't normally jog out on hacks, even when we have been trotting she's happy to come back down to a walk. Although she will sometimes try to jog if we go out with another horse - which is something we rarely do because I'm on a very small yard an no-one else is around when I want to go out.

I think she is just fired up and ready to go and she anticipates the faster work that I will be asking her to do. I can walk her round in the school on the buckle end of the reins when we are warming up or cooling down and she stretches down and walks along without any problems.
 
To stop jogging I think I'd ride a lot from leg to hand - hand doign more of a prevent the energy going too much forward rather than getting into a pull. What was it I was once taught... squeesing the toothpaste tube with my legs, holding the lid on the toothpaste tube, rather than squashing it back into the tube with hands - lol!

Then again if it were me I wouldn't worry so much about getting walk not jog if you are trying to sort out canter transitions - particulalry not between now and Friday. I went through this very similarly with F a few months back, but his was not wanting to trot - jog or dive bomb into canter, yes, but not trot! In that case my instructor just had me ignore that because a little too much impulsion was better then not enough to get the canter strike off right for him.

Good luck!
 
Leg, leg and more leg. Horses that jog are still evading going forwards they are just doing it in a different way. Keep a steady contact and use alternate legs to push the momentum forwards in walk. Forget about her head and neck and just get her moving from behind, this will also help with canter transitions. Also be careful that you aren't tight through your inside thigh as this will also restict and can cause jogging.

Good luck
 
Thanks everyone for your advice. I am having physio on my back and ankle tomorrow so I am hoping to feel like a new woman for Friday's lesson. Maybe that will make all the difference to Nelly's way of going if I am more supple myself. Fingers crossed.......
 
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