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Re: [RC] jigging - Merri Melde

I just have to add my 3 cents worth here.

There's a difference between a frustrated jigging horse, a mad jigging horse, a BORED jigging horse, and a frantic jigging horse. The frustrated and frantic ones can be bad, because you don't know what the horse is going to do (bolt, flip over, fall down, etc), while the mad and bored ones can sometimes merely be irritating.

I rode Zayante, Jackie Bumgardner's awesome 13,000-mile horse about 700 AERC miles. I would estimate that he jigged about half of those miles, because he was bored, and thought he was going ENTIRELY too slow. He probably jigged about half the training miles I rode on him too.

Sometimes it got quite irritating, but then Zayante was irritated too, and by god, if that horse was 23 years old (or whatever his age, we weren't sure), and he'd carried his riders 9000 or 11,000 miles, (not counting training miles), I was so in awe of him, he could jig till the cows came home, as far as I was concerned. (and believe me, he COULD jig till the cows came home!)

And it's all, of course, Just My Opinion



--
www.endurance.net/merri
www.TheEquestrianVagabond.com
http://theequestrianvagabond.blogspot.com/

On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 10:04 AM, stephanie teeter <steph@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
forwarding a post for Roger-

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Roger G." <texastwist@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 16, 2010 9:56:13 AM MST
Subject: ride camp post jigging

Jigging
Horses trick us into holding the reins tight to keep them in check when they are full of energy. If you keep them checked all the time this energy is released in the form of jigging. You are always fighting with them through the reins and therefore they fight back by jigging. They trick us into holding contact with their mouth all the time! The trick is to check their speed and then release rein pressure. They will speed up, but you check and release again and again and again and again. Eventually the time between checks will grow longer and longer and longer, which translates into less jigging. It is not an overnight transformation, and periods of relapse happen all the time. What we must guard against is being tricked again into holding tension on the reins all the time.
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Horses like to trick us riders into making them jig. Don’t fall for it. Check and release. Horses listen because we get out of their mouths, not because get into them. It is the pressure release that is the reward. Check and release equals less and less jigging.
Similar to half halt work.
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Roger? G.
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