What to do with straightforward horse

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I know its not exactly something to moan about, but I have an odd problem. The last two days I've schooled my four year old and she's been totally fab. Walk, trot, canter - forward in a soft outline. Perfect (well by my standards, which are pretty low!). After 20 minutes I don't know what to do, I want to get off. I'm so used to it taking so long to loosen up horse/get control of horse/win battles with horse that my young horse is a bit of a mystery to me.

I think we're at a stage where we could use some lessons to push us a bit, but as long as I've still got my big mare I'm skint and can't justify paying for them yet. I'd also quite like to chuck school work for a bit and just hack, but this is a non-starter as my young horse's one major flaw is she's shite in traffic.

So I suppose what I'm after is some ideas for things to work on. Ways to make riding (and being ridden from my horse's POV) a bit more interesting and purposeful.

Cheers.
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Lol, enjoy
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To help with the hacking, try having fun in the school. Do the big umbrellas, scary egg boxes (yup!), plastic bags, etc etc etc.

Put out poles and play with them. And cones and anything else you have to make life interesting.

Little Cob hates more than ten minutes schooling, but put some cones out and his little ears prick up. He needs a purpose does the lad.
 
Poles in squares as well as in a line, hacking, lunging, voice training oh my how lucky you are. Bending around cones - meeting all the strange things you can find!

Enjoy it while it lasts - oops glass half empty brigade. Youngsters tend to get a bit over confident after a while!
 
You could do some long reining, some lunging, try some leg yielding and lateral work to get her thinking, put some trotting poles out, oh the lists are endless.
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I also like MrsMozart's idea of bombproofing, when she goes towards something and lets it touch her, give her a treat, she will learn its not so scary
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What about taking her along the road in a bridle for inhand walks, so that she learns that traffic isn't scary and you can reassure her from the ground? Even let her have some mouthfulls of grass, food makes everything better
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Izzi
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Thank you both! I know I'm very lucky and she's super.
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I can't do much jumping as I've got an old back injury but a few small ones should be OK. I have popped her over a few sneaky crosspoles.
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I'll get a few things out as obstacles, good point about it helping with the hacking. Although she's pretty cool about ordinary spooky things, its vehicles bigger than cars that seem to be the enemy.
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whereabouts are you? I've got a super dooper old mare who is a fab hacker and has helped traffic train a number of youngsters!
Oh and I'm also a bit bored, lonely and in need of motivation to get into my saddle as all my friends have left the yard I'm at (and I have transport)
 
Thanks, more good ideas. I should start doing more lunging and ground work, I've just been enjoying riding her so much. Its about time I started with a bit of a plan for progress though and I agree some groundwork's really important. I'll kick myself up the backside on doing that!
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I don't fancy leading her near traffic, she's VERY scared of big vehicles and reacts pretty violently, I'd probably lose her if I wasn't sat on her and clinging on. I could do with borrowing a field next to a busy road really.
 
Then I would arrange for some vehicles bigger than cars to be around my schooling area, and I would get them to rev their engines and move around randomly while I was schooling.

I would leave the ordinary quiet schooling for a while - you obviously have that cracked.

Work on the confidence out hacking - as many scary things as possible in the everyday environment. Have balloons and plastic bags tied to fences that she walks past. Put odd things in the way of her normal turn out route - a baby buggy, a teddy bear, an umbrella..........all that sort of stuff. Try someone riding a bike past her - that often freaks them out.

It sounds as if you have a really great horse, but she does need to get used to scary stuff if she's going to be any use.
 
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whereabouts are you? I've got a super dooper old mare who is a fab hacker and has helped traffic train a number of youngsters!


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Oh that's so nice of you. Unfortunately I'm in Cheshire. My livery yard is great but all the competent riders have sharp young horses and all the owners of the safe plods aren't very confident about baby-sitting.

I'm sure we'll sort it, its just one thing that might take some time.
 
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whereabouts are you? I've got a super dooper old mare who is a fab hacker and has helped traffic train a number of youngsters!
Oh and I'm also a bit bored, lonely and in need of motivation to get into my saddle as all my friends have left the yard I'm at (and I have transport)

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God! I'd bite your arm off for that sort of offer!!
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Shame Northampton isn't anywhere near Kent
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I'm in a similar predicament to the Poster. Don't think my 4yr old is upto going out hacking on her own yet.

All we're doing in the field is bending round electric fence posts, the trees, and trotting over poles. As any semblance of schooling and she starts napping
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Can you hire an arena where she can meet some nasty scary big vehicles at a safe distance? If we hire the covered outdoor at Moreton Morrell you get tractors, lorries, diggers, all sorts of things! You can then hack round the grounds and meet some more! It's an amazing experience for a young horse - they're usually very sleepy the next day!
 
Ah, I think I have the opposite problem. My rising 4 year old mare is amazing in traffic but if you attempt to school her she has a wobbly. I've managed to get 10 mins max nice work out of her before, but I have to break it up with some bending poles etc.
 
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Can you hire an arena where she can meet some nasty scary big vehicles at a safe distance?

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Hmmm, good idea. I can't think of anywhere off the top of my head, but I'll try to think of somewhere like this. I do plan on doing a lot of loitering in lorry parks at riding club shows over the summer.
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Its nice to hear there's others in similar situations. The couple of safe hacking people on our livery yard are fought over each weekend!

You're all right in that it makes more sense to focus on working on this issue rather than just riding round the school when she does that fine.
 
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Ah, I think I have the opposite problem. My rising 4 year old mare is amazing in traffic but if you attempt to school her she has a wobbly. I've managed to get 10 mins max nice work out of her before, but I have to break it up with some bending poles etc.

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Me too.....out hacking he's brill....10 mins of school work and its 'thankyou, but no....'

last week was amazing because we trotted around the school twice without grinding to a halt, and actually cantered in there for the first time ever....

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The other thing to do might be to chat up a young farmer
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to bring a tractor up to your yard and drive it up and down etc. My mare used to be rubbish with tractors - still not sure she'd be great with them on the roads, but then we don't hack much. It became a problem at the shows we go to cos they tend to use fairly big kit throught the weekend to maintain the arenas, transport bedding etc
But at our last yard, the YM was always buzzing round with a tractor and muck trailer, arena grader and topper and his attitude was that the horses just had to get used to it. It worked to such an extent that when his brother crashed the topper into a manhole cover right by the arena, neither my horse, the 3yo that the YM was riding or his wife's very spooky stallion batted an eyelid, while we jumped out of our skins!
 
Personally I'd say get her out hacking more to be honest, even just a little way and back again. I think people really under value how beneficial it is to get a horse out hacking confidently. All our horse shave HAD to be hacked out, not all of them were confident to start with but they soon get into it and over time you forget there was ever a problem.

Shame you're not nearer Yorkshire way cos i'd take you out with mine p he likes to pretend he's scared of stuff but traffic isn't one of them!
 
Thanks, I agree in principle, but in practice the more I try to insist on hacking, the worse her bottle's getting. I'm going to box up to as many farm rides and off road rides as I can (once the horsebox I've ordered finally arrives
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She'll be doing really well, and then once she goes anywhere near a tractor or sees a van or bigger thing she totally goes to bits. You can't get her passed any cars, and if anything tries to pass her she just rears and jumps out in front of it. All the hacking near me is really quiet lanes so fairly narrow and its just proved counter-productive to make her go out every day only to go well until she thinks she gets terrorized and goes back stressed and upset.

We kind of scare the drivers too.
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At least when I do manage to get a hacking partner, even though the reactions are just as bad, she settles down again once the vehicles have gone. It's quite out of character for her to be a drama queen, as I say in every other way she's totally straightforward, so its possible she's had a bad experience on the roads.
 
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