Spurs!

[rfoxy1]

I am wanting to buy some spurs for my horse as she is lazy in the school and out hacking, was just wondering what the best kind to buy are as they're many out there !! HELP

 

[sally2008]

What methods have you tried to sharpen her up to the leg so far?

 

[YasandCrystal]

I personally would not use spurs on a lazy horse - the point of spurs is as an aid enhancer for a horse already going well off the leg. You need to school your horse in a way to make them sensitive to the leg. Lots of transition work. My advice would be to get a good nstructor to help you. If you use spurs what will you do when your horse gets used to those? And they will for sure.

 

[rfoxy1]

Have used a schooling whip and tried several transitions when I say lazy I mean she doesn't work forward into an outline not that she's not listening to my leg

 

[rfoxy1]

Feels like she needs the extra up to come up in front to my hands

 

[oldie48]

I personally would not use spurs on a lazy horse - the point of spurs is as an aid enhancer for a horse already going well off the leg. You need to school your horse in a way to make them sensitive to the leg. Lots of transition work. My advice would be to get a good nstructor to help you. If you use spurs what will you do when your horse gets used to those? And they will for sure.

In principal I agree with the above. As this is in the new rider/owner section I'm assuming you are not an experienced rider, sorry if I'm wrong.I think the problem with a lazy horse is it's easy to start nagging with the legs because we don't get much response and this effectively further desensitises the horse. Then if we start using spurs to try to get the horse to take notice of our leg, unless our leg position is very secure we can desensitise it even more. it can be quite difficult getting a backward thinking horse to be more forward. Is your horse the right weight? If it's too fat get some weight off it, don't feed high energy feed to try to get it going, it will just make it fatter and possibly silly. I'd also think about how you sit, are you loose in the seat and leg? When you ask for an upward transition, do you always give with your hands? sometimes our legs say go and the rest of our body say stop, which is a bit confusing for the horse. Transitions are brilliant both up and down and within the different gaits. Walk to canter, canter walk transitions work really well with my horse, you need to find out what works for you. Having said all of that, my horse knows when I've got spurs on and is much more responsive so i don't need to use my leg as much, when I don't wear spurs he's a lazy b....er but I'd certainly try other things first.