Why Round Pen Work
The round pen serves as an important tool in the initial stages of training a horse for these primary reasons:
- it provides a secure enclosed space where you have optimal contact with your horse.
- its lack of corners prevents the horse from positioning its hind-end at you and locking that position.
- it allows you to establish communication with your horse, teach body cues, work on moving the horses feet ~ all done through tactics of pressure, release and reward.
A round pen allows for quick learning and although it’s a bit of an investment, it’s worth the cost in terms of safety and ease of training. I find I go back to the round pen when I need to work on communication, go back to some fundamental work, introduce a new concept or cue or if I’m teaching something that requires me being off the horse (like some trick training).
The first two reasons for having a round pen I mentioned above are safety related. It’s that third reason, to establish communication, where the training starts. So why make your horse run around in the round pen? Initially, it’s to establish leadership. Horses don’t work on a democracy principle. The biggest mistake people make with their horses is allowing a partnership in decision making – i.e. “sometimes I’ll decide what we do and other times you can decide what we do….” In the horse world there are only two positions – Leader and Follower. A horse gets confused and anxious when it’s position, leader or follower, is always changing and this can lead to problem behavior.
Tessla working in the round pen
When you ask a horse to ‘move’ in the round pen, you apply pressure with your body – moving in closer to the horse’s hip, giving a cue like clucking and using some form of motivation like a rope or lunge whip swung at his hip. The cue is used as a signal meaning “move your feet”. The motivator, whip or rope, reinforces the cue. In the beginning, we don’t care where he moves his feet as long as it’s not ‘into’ you (hence the motivator to keep him from running you over), or at what speed, just as long as he moves them. Eventually you ask for variations in speed by increasing pressure (moving into your horse), increasing the energy of your motivator and using the clucking cue until the desired speed is reached. The reward for the horse, once the desired speed is reached, is a quieting of pressure, energy and the cue. For slowing speed we decrease proximity pressure, stop our vocal cue (clucking) and motivator energy and quiet ourselves until the desired speed is reached.
Next comes controlling where he moves his feet by turning him. Turning is done by positioning your body at a safe distance in front of the horse – at a slight angle to his shoulder and cutting off his forward direction, giving a cue such as pointing your arm in the new direction you want him to go, clucking to keep his feet moving and applying your motivator if necessary. Turning works by applying a proximity pressure with your body. This proximity pressure is subtle but strongly felt by the horse. Too much pressure and the horse turns away from you by turning into the round pen fence with his rump pointed at you (a defensive reaction). Not enough pressure and the horse just blows on by you. Ideally, apply proximity pressure to stop his forward motion, back off the pressure incrementally, still using your pointing cue, so he faces into you, then put the pressure back on toward his outside (fence side) shoulder to complete the turn and change direction. This takes some practice so play around with it. Your aim is to have your horse move his feet with some cue (clucking), move in the direction you point (pointing your arm), stop his forward direction – turn in towards you – and change his direction using a series of proximity pressures and releases, arm pointing and feet moving cue. Get to where you can do this at all three gaits. Reward the ‘turning in’ behavior by pausing, backing off pressure and allowing the horse to have a moment of rest while facing you. If he turns away from you, quickly turn him back (even if it means he turns with his rump facing you) in the direction he was originally going. Don’t allow any rest moment. Keep up this turning until he turns in towards you. Be sure to allow a release of pressure and rest moment to reward the turning in.
By working on this ‘move your feet’, ‘put your feet where I tell you’, ’speed your feet up when I tell you’ and ‘turn into me when changing directions’, you are indicating to the horse that you are leader. You are communicating with your horse through a series of body positions, proximity pressure, vocal cues (clucking) and physical cues (arm raising) that you are the decision maker or Leader. A horse will respect this if it is done with fairness and isn’t confusing for him. Be sure to keep things simple. Reward the horse with moments of rest time, pets (you go to him and pet while he’s resting) and a soft voice. Work in small chunks. Don’t over-exhaust and stress your horse. Don’t lose your temper with your horse! If he is having trouble or is acting confused back up to something simple that he does well, reward him and quit. Try again another day and work in small steps.
Notice that I haven’t mentioned working on the Whoa or stop. Often times when you put a young or green horse into the round pen for the first time their energy levels are going to be high. Capitalize on this. It will take only a little motivation to get the horse’s feet moving. Work at increasing speed and turning into you. After a little bit of this, work on slowing speed which will be a lot easier to do when the horse’s energy has petered out a bit. Slow speed by decreasing proximity pressure and quieting all movement. If this doesn’t work start turning the horse and when asking him to move off in the new direction, do so with slow clucking and only a minimum of pressure and motivator. Now comes the time to teach the “Whoa”. Since you’ve been allowing those moments of rest when the horse turns into you, use that moment to teach the “Whoa”. As he turns into you, back off pressure and quiet all motion as if you are going to give him that rest moment (he’ll probably be way ahead of you, looking for the break), say “Whoa” in a loud, firm voice and cease all movement and cues. Just stop! Wait. Now if the horse starts to move into you on his own, send him back out and make him exert some energy and do the turn-stop(whoa) again. Repeat if he moves into you without you asking. Eventually, he figures out that if he just stands there, he won’t have to work hard. After a few moments of quietly standing, go to your horse and reward him with rubs, scratches and kind words. Walk back to the center of the round pen. If he follows you, send him back out at a quick gait and work him a bit. The idea here is to get him to stop on the Whoa command and stay stopped. If he can’t stay stopped then he has to do more work. He will quickly figure out that he would rather not work so hard and will stay put. We want this. We want him to wait for us to give a cue or command. If he doesn’t want to wait for our direction then he works harder. Eventually, he waits for us.
It’s important to note that I haven’t asked the horse to come into the center of the round pen with me. I’d rather not have the horse get used to that. A horse quickly connects coming into the center with not having to work anymore. If you encourage this then you create a horse that will always try to come into the center when he wants to quit working. At a later time you can teach coming to you on a cue. For right now practice the “Whoa” and stay….eventually expanding upon it while the horse is going forward and not in the middle of a turn. When you say “Whoa”, he should stop and face you, waiting for the next directive.
All this initial work sets the stage for the next steps in training. We have taught the horse some cues (clucking, arm pointing, Whoa), we’ve communicated with him via our body language (proximity pressure and release, position of our body in relation to his) and we’ve set a precedent about giving him ‘choices’ - our way or the hard way (running around with lots of turns). It’s this concept about choices that helps us for the other stages of training. When saddling a green horse, we give him the choice to stand quietly in the middle of the round pen and accept an incremental introduction to the saddle and pad or run in the round pen, doing turns and moving his feet. Because horses don’t want to work harder then they have to (as well as people) they will quickly learn your way is the easier way! Of course this all takes into consideration you haven’t done more to the horse then he can handle, you haven’t gotten angry at him or made him fearful and that you have worked in small steps, each building upon the previous one to help reinforce his trust in you as good and fair leader.
The next step I like to do in the round pen requires some in-hand work, some hip and shoulder movement, moving away from pressure, body bending and some desensitizing of tack, rope and stick. Until next post – best wishes for you and your four legged friend.
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