Ok, not entirely endurance related, but I’m trying to
help a friend that is hoping to try her first ride this fall. She has an 8 yo
paint gelding.He was just gelded
last year and was actively breeding before she got him.He does not have good ground manners and
is very strong and bossy.
I’ve given her some things to work on to help the
ground manners and in the long run that should help the rest, but he just will
NOT back out of her 2 horse trailer.He just bullies his way forward even if you get a couple steps back and
will mostly just stand there no matter what you do. I’ve had pretty good successes
getting horses to go into trailers and learn to back out calmly – but I’m
used to arabs where creating
motion is the easy thing, then you just have to direct it. I am not good at creating motion when the
horse does not want to move.Any suggestions?
We worked for a couple hours, but my final advice was to
just leave him there if he wanted food or to get to his buddies.Four hours later he was still
there.I had suggested that she
leave him completely alone, but I think she spent most of the time trying to
coax him out. I think today she
will try again and ignore him as much as possible.
I was using a crop to tap on the front of his legs, first as
a cue, then to annoy him into moving.He might take a couple steps back and I’d stop and praise him, but
then next ask and he’d just bully his way forward.This guy is very strong and he knows it.
He does back well in hand outside
of the trailer – I just can’t figure out a cue that I can use in a
safe place when he’s in the trailer.
