I think Merri has a point. On one CTR, my horse only
started jigging when we got behind two of the world's slowest horses on a trail
that was too narrow to pass. A friend's horse jigged the whole ride
because she would not let him go as fast as he wanted. But we weren't
afraid that either horse would flip out and do anything dangerous.
My horse also cantered sideways back and forth in the
arena before a dressage competition. Not scary, just
difficult.
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!)
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.
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.
