The longer we stay with an exercise the more good things it gives us.
This lesson beautifully illustrates this concept. It begins by looking at a very frustrating problem; a horse that siddles backwards each time the rider starts to get on. Over time horse and rider have evolved a long dance routine at the mounting block. The horse lines up beautifully, but she reads any move towards the stirrup as a cue to back up. Back up, come forward, back again. We've probably all seen it. This kind of mounting block jig is very common.
So the lesson begins by looking at the power of cues to interrupt this long standing pattern. It adds extra layers to the "Capture the Saddle" lesson presented in Lesson 11.
In the "Capture the Saddle" DVD you learn how to ask the horse to soften his jaw to the side and yield his hips to bring him to a stand still at the mounting block. So obviously, yielding the hips can get a horse to stop. Yielding the hips can also get a horse to go. The same basic exercise can create two very different results. In this DVD you'll see how we get a stuck horse to connect her feet to the reins and to go into motion.
That same softening the jaw and connecting the feet to the hips can now be used to ride a simple pattern around a circle of cones. This is the same exercise I introduced in the "Capture the Saddle" DVD, but now I'm going to take it a step further to show you an easy way to pop out the beginnings of lateral flexions. So in this one lesson we go from a stuck-in-cement horse to one that is beginning to flow into lateral flexions.
At the end of the lesson, just for fun, I show you what a horse can do who understands good balance.
Approx 2 hours.
Click Here to read what Alexandra Kurland says about her series of clicker training books and DVDs, and how to get the best from the lesson sequence.
