Riding (hacking) one horse and leading another.

[MDB]

Just a thought, you say your mare is the boss in the field, however, when she is ridden she is under your control, this may make her feel vulnerable. I've noticed that my old TB, who is always bossed about by my other horse, will happily nip him given the chance if boss horse is being led from the field and he is loose. I have no doubt that if I rode boss horse and led the old boy, there would be trouble. Herd dynamics can be quite fluid and one horse ridden, one led might change them.

Yes, the dynamics are very fluid as you say. It may be something to do with that. If only I could speak 'Horse'!

 

[MDB]

I did try - briefly - doing a lead-and-ride with my two.

Traddie cob is a wiley little s0d, and I led him from my (dominant) mare. Started out fine with her nipping him nicely into line, which is what she's obviously done before in her previous home with youngsters, but it didn't take long for Himself to realise that, hee hee, he was out without anyone on his back, and that meant that hee hee, he could behave like a loon coz he didn't have a person on his back. Everything was fine till he decided to spook at something that he's gone past a million times before, and in the end I had to dismount and lead both home.

I did try riding the Traddie and leading mare; that did work slightly better, but Traddie knew that I had something else to think about and his evil brain figured that hee hee he could then try behaving like a loon and start spooking to the extent that I nearly let go of the mare who I was leading.

So that was the end of the experiment really. A pity, coz it would save me so much time to be able to ride-one, lead-one. Blimmin horses.

yep! Blimmin horses! it is not easy is it? I am determines to give it a good go though, so as others suggested, groundwork and practice in the field and repetition.. even if we start out going down the lane and back. Will see what happens!

 

[MDB]

So I did it! Well, sort of. I cheated a bit.

I saddled up scaredy horse, then lead both horses out. Went for a walk in hand, down the hills along the trails at the back of our house. Gave a few treats along the way. All was relaxed. It always is when we go out for in hand walks. No nervousness.

After last time I was convinced that I could have calmed scaredy mare down if I didn't have the other mare's lead rope to manage too. So, in view of the fact that we were now on our way home, in the countryside, with no roads nearby, on narrow trails, I took a gamble and decided to remove bomproof mare's lead rope and leave her loose to follow us back.

Scaredy mare was very brave but still looky looky. I am not sure why the dynamics of a riderless horse seem to make her much more nervous, but it does. We had about two or three episodes of not wanting to go forwards and trying to turn away because of the monsters. I kept turning her to face the direction we were going and let her look for as long as she wanted. We had a bit of a foot stomp, but with encouragement and reassurance we got past just fine.

Just as she was really relaxing and we were both gaining confidence, the allure of bombproof mare's favourite puddle at the top of the hill, 200m ahead, was too much for her and she decided to overtake. Despite me shouting 'WHOA!' at the top of my voice, she flipped me the bird as she trotted past eager to get to her puddle. I thought to myself, 'oh heck, the poop is going to hit the fan now, cos my scaredy mare is going to freak'. However, I managed to calm scaredy mare and get her to stop herself from bolting away (which was another great thing as this has been my first big test going bitless).

Eventually we caught up with bombproof mare two minutes later still splashing around in the mud.

So this experience has taught me two things.
1. It was completely unrealistic of me to expect bombproof mare to follow us obediently without a lead rope. I was lucky with how that ended.
2. My little scaredy mare did listen to me today and trust me with those monsters.

So, plan of action. Got a friend coming to stay this week so maybe she will be able to help if I try to ride scaredy mare and also lead bombproof mare. She could be the extra pair of hands that I need if my scaredy mare gets a panic on, I could pass the lead rope to her and I can calm scaredy mare down. And then go from there. Keeping at it, I am confident now that with practice scaredy mare will get braver and hopefully I can alternate which horse I ride and which horse I lead, and we will have two nicely fit horses by summer

 

[JFTDWS]

It's a funny thing, riding and leading. To the lead horse, they may as well be on their own, in their heads.

When you hacked in company, did you take the lead or follow.

It's almost irrelevant because my young horse will lead in a normal hack very confidently however she doesn't get any confidence at all from towing the same riderless horse along beside us, we could be alone as far as she is concerned (she does hack alone too). I can't tell you why that is, only that it is a thing I've noticed, and I ride and lead a lot.

That's interesting - F is infinitely better towing another horse than he is alone. He definitely takes confidence from D's presence. D doesn't take confidence from anything because he's too busy being a cocky wee sod


Glad your experiment ended well, OP. An interesting one anyway :eek3: Good luck with the further efforts.