My school horse keeps rooting?!

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kitofkat19

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Hey everyone,

Im needing a little bit of a hand with the horse that im riding during my lessons, she keeps rooting. I noticed that the horse keeps doing it when stationary and sometimes walking but mainly just standing.

She pulls the rains pretty hard and sometimes it can lift me out the saddle or have the rain come out of my hands.

What should I do to stop this, im gonna also talk to my instructor about this so she what she thinks as well?
 
I find the best way is to get the horse moving forward with your legs. They automatically lift their head up to go forward. If you try to pull it up with the reins you can end up in a pulling match and they are so much stronger.
 
I’ve never heard of the term rooting before - are you in the US? I find horses do this when they’re not being kept busy enough. If it’s out on hacks I make sure they have nothing to pull against every time they do it.
 
mule said:
I find the best way is to get the horse moving forward with your legs. They automatically lift their head up to go forward. If you try to pull it up with the reins you can end up in a pulling match and they are so much stronger.
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Do you mean as give them a kick/ gentle squeeze with your legs. Normally it happenes when my instructor asks the group to halt so I won't be able to move or anything like that?
 
IrishMilo said:
I’ve never heard of the term rooting before - are you in the US? I find horses do this when they’re not being kept busy enough. If it’s out on hacks I make sure they have nothing to pull against every time they do it.
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No im from Scotland, i got the term rooting online when looking at other sources for answers. We arent out on hacks, im in a group lesson inside a school
 
kitofkat19 said:
Do you mean as give them a kick/ gentle squeeze with your legs. Normally it happenes when my instructor asks the group to halt so I won't be able to move or anything like that?
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Thats what i meant but if the instructor wants the group to stop then maybe they want to deal with it a different way. It would be best to ask the instructor what they want you to do.
 
Hello kok. Sorry to hear you are getting this problem and I agree with asking the ride instructor. However, please be aware that some horses will have developed awkward ingrained habits which they enjoy performing whenever possible. It's top marks for asking and trying to find a solution. Hope you get a workable answer.
 
Rooting - or pig rooting - is where the horse carries it's head low and sort of shimmies from side to side with the shoulders - think about how pig looks when it is burrowing in earth. Its a classic evasion from a school sour horse. The answer is as mule suggests - but it is massively harder to do than it sounds.

The horse has learned that the way to get out of doing anything is this behaviour. It can mooch along at the back of the ride and not do much - if you ask it to step away from the ride etc. it will do this because the rider has little or no hope of convincing it otherwise. Frustratingly the more effective the school rider is the worse this behaviour is - until they become sufficiently effective to stop them.

The answer is to drive forward from your legs. Pretty much let the reins go (not entirely!) becuase you can't hold a horse's head up by the reins. They are stronger than you. If they are moving forward they have to hold thier head up to see what they are doing. That said - and I have seen this a lot in school sour ponies sold to PC kids who love them - there is a massive gap between what the horse can do and still root and what the rider can do to stop it. The evasion becomes worse and worse as the rider becomes more effective. It will include all the worst trick school ponies learn - dropping the shoulder, fly bucking. diving etc.

If you have bought a school sour pony that does this - turn away from a few months then good positive schooling from an experienced and stronger adult. These ponies are not stupid. They won't waste thier time in a behaviour that doesn't produce a result. The trick is to convince them to continue thier good behaviour with a novice on their back.

If this is a riding school pony - and it sounds like it is - realistically you need a different pony. You have two issues. They have learned that the way to stop a novice hanging on to thier head in a manner which is uncomfortable is to pull the reins out the the rider's hands. And that they have learned to do this when standing and waiting rather than when on the move - presumeably becuase they get walloped with a stick otherwise. It will take some work to school the horse out of this. Not something you can do in a lesson. And if your horse in a lesson is doing this then your ability to progress - given that you don't have the experiene to school out of it - is seriously limited.
 
Quigleyandme said:
In Australia pig rooting is pawing the ground.
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When I was in Australia "pig rooting" was when they did little jumpy humpy backed head down bucks, kinda like Tigger just bouncing off all fours. It usually happened getting on something fresh in the morning.

That was the northern territory though so maybe different states have different terminology.
 
DabDab said:
Well that's 4 different answers all confidently asserted.... :p

And when I looked it up it seemed to cover a variety of different behaviours in Auz/NZ, and in north america it is just the horse jerking on the bit.
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Yeah so OP needs to come back and be more descriptive ?

I've never heard the term used outside of Oz
 
In Canada it means jerking reins out of your hands. Sugar had a habit of this (especially after jumping) and we thought it was manners. Turned out her teeth were in a right state. She’s pretty good now, will still occasionally do it (especially if we’re just standing and not doing anything). That is a manners thing, and we’re working on it.
 
If the horse is only doing it when standing still, I suspect you have gone into auto mode when standing.

If I am standing still and not paying attention, I tend to loose the reins completely so the horse can stretch. This is at my behest, and to be rewarded with the stretch, the horse has to initially halt and stand softly holding the bit. The horse soon knows that I will reward with a stretch if he stands softly, and so the length of time he stands can be lengthened.

If I expect the horse to stand to attention, on the bridle, then I also need to be paying attention and have some sort of discrete dialogue down the rein and with my legs. I am talking micro feels to let the horse know I am still there with him.

Generally, with a school horse, I will appreciate their workload and do the first option, to allow a stretch at my behest.
 
There are so many takes on the word rooting lol

Its not a term i have heard re horses..but just as a word to me "rooting" would be putting their head down and digging with a leg like how they would when about to roll. Which, with a rider on, would indicate quite bad back pain.
 
Rooting to me means leaning on the bit then backing off it resulting in destabilising the hands of the rider. (Western US)
Whether or not the horse succeeds is up to the rider.
It is tiresome behaviour and annoying.
Check the teeth, if that's not it, talk to a good trainer.
 
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