ridecamp@endurance.net: Re: [endurance] Allowing a horse to choose his own gait
Re: [endurance] Allowing a horse to choose his own gait
idj3q.office@mhs-tva.attmail.com ("idj3q.office@mhs-tva.attmail.com")
Wed, 15 May 1996 16:49:53 -0400
Lynette - I think that most of us are not as far apart on this thing as it
might appear. My personal experience is that with a green or previously
spoiled horse the rider must teach the horse to respond to commands. The time
I do this is on many training rides where I choose both speed and gait. When
responsiveness is starting to get ingrained we then start working on it at
events where the excitement of the activity and all the other horses can cause
many horses to 'forget' that I'm in charge. One tool that I use to teach my
endurance horse is to ride safety for CT rides so that he is forced to be at
the back of the pack all day. I'd much rather work on patience where the pack
is going a little slower. This lets him learn that he is going to be on the
trail a long time and that it is ok to be behind everyone else. To me this
seems very important yet I know of several horse/rider teams where the rider
will not accept the responsibility of teaching the horse to listen and have
the pace set for him.
With a seasoned horse in an endurance ride I generally insist on trotting at
least at the start until we get settled into the ride. Then I set the speed
based on conditions, what I think Lew Hollander calls resonance riding, and
what my HRM shows. Always, I try to be aware of what my horse is telling me
so that I can stop us or change the speed and gait if I think it is necessary.
However, I give our main horse credit for taking care of himself (and me or
my daughter). After the first leg of a ride this horse usually is allowed to
choose the gait he will use at a given time.
This has worked well for us with 9 out of the last 10 fifties we've done being
top-tens. He was not capable of doing this the first few rides (we only did
50's) because he was an idiot for awhile. It seems to me that it is
something like having a child that has not learned to make good decisions yet.
Eventually he will probably learn but you don't give him more responsibility
than he is ready to handle at any given time.
This is very interesting discussion to me because I like to hear other riders'
opinions on this kind of thing.
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Dave Bennett & Ben Amil - Endurance & Pony Club Horse Extraordinaire!
Southern Rock - The youngster
e-mail: idj3q@mhs-tva.attmail.com
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