Spooking on trails ( or anywhere else ! )

[guest@endurance.net]

Dru tdmonte@theriver.com
Hi All,
  I used to ride a very spooky arabian horse named Cyrcksyz, some of you
old timers might remember him, he would spook all day on 50 milers and
then spook at the finish line. I had a lot of bad falls off that horse
until I took more dressage lessons and had the trainer teach me a method
called "shutting the door", which was useing the leg and rein to stop the
direction of the spook and either doing a shoulder in or shoulder out or
something else to get the horses' mind off the spook, while moving
forward. The most important part of stopping spooking behavior is to be
sensative enough to anticipate a spook, you know, that tenseing of the
back muscles you can feel just before the action starts , and being adept
enough to block the direction of the spook with aids. If you are spaceing
off and not paying attention, you get dumped. And yes, taking the horse
off the trail and doing circles and figure eights works a bit, but makes
it kind of hard to get some miles and is only a temporary fix. The only
time Cyrcksyz did not spook was when we would do the man from snowy river
stuff, where he had to go fast and keep his feet under him, made him a
great rough country riding horse, but he was hell on roads and trails
until the dressage lessons. I rode that horse for eight years, and then he
went into dressage permanently, he loved it, who would have known ? :-)
Dru