Round Pen Purpose Part II
In a previous post I went through techniques of working a horse in the round pen and the philosophy behind such work. There was nothing new and original in this ‘how to’, just my adaptations and interpretations of the many great horse trainers out there and a reference to my own horse training experience. However, I want to philosophize a bit on what round pen work means for me as a horse person.
When I go into a round pen with a horse for the first time I try not to have any hard and set ideas about what I’m going to do with the horse. I take an item or two in with me such as a lead rope and maybe a stick or lunge whip. I think of this first moment with the horse as a spiritual moment, as hokey as that may sound. I just go into the middle of the round pen and observe how the horse reacts to my presence. I assess the little things like the ear position, how the horse’s eye watches me, the body position in relation to me. I try to ‘feel’ the energy the horse is generating because of my presence in the round pen. Do I sense anger, fear, excitement, joy, boredom or challenge? When I take some slow steps towards the horse how does he react to me? Does he look at me and slow down or raise his head and speed up? If I approach him with quick steps how does he react to me? Is he quick to get on the defensive? Does he move off in fear? Does he ignore me? All of this tells me how this horse views me in the pecking order and that in turn tells me a lot about how I’ll have to adapt my energy to work with him. It also tells me how I’ll need to proceed with him.
For example, here is a video of me working an 18 month old Friesian in the round pen. This was the first time this filly had been worked in a round pen and the first time she had ever been lunged! So why do I have her on a lunge line instead of doing free lunging as I’ve emphasized starting out with? There was a reason…read on….
What is this energy I’m talking about? This Friesian filly was a good example. When she and I were first in the round pen, and she was away from her herd – she couldn’t even see them, she had a major panic attack. She went tearing around the round pen and a couple of times tried to climb over the walls. I was concerned that she would hurt herself and she certainly wasn’t paying any attention to me. If I tried to make her run in the hopes of focusing her, her fear and agitation became more pronounced. It was time to lower the energy and change tactics.
I put her on a lunge line to do a couple of things. One was to work on her stop. By doing this I could began to get her focus. Prior to when this video starts, I worked for about 20 minutes on disengaging her hips in both directions. She didn’t know how to lunge so I worked up close with her. I positioned my body near her hip, clucked for forward motion, and tapped her hip to drive her forward. I also put some forward pressure on the lunge line as a motivator. She would go forward, sometimes leap forward, I’d let her go about half way around me then would pull her nose into me, say whoa, and cause her hips to disengage (swing opposite to my pull) which stops her forward motion. I did this over and over again until I had her attention and she started to understand how to ‘give’ to the pressure on her face.
At this point I started to push her out farther by applying more driving force to her backend and letting out some on the lunge line. When I have a horse on a lunge line I like to maintain an elastic pressure on the line. If the line becomes slack it means the horse is moving into me. I will flick the lunge whip at the shoulder to drive the horse to the end of the line. This also helps prevent a horse from dropping his shoulder into the circle and swinging his hind end out. My goal is to encourage the horse to hold himself upright. I also want to encourage him to bring that inside hind foot up under his body. To do that I alternate between driving him from behind and pushing his shoulder out.
When I have that elastic contact on the lunge line, I will give periodic pressure and release pulls to supple the horses neck and have him tip his nose in – all of which help to bring that inside hind leg under him. If you start out with a small circle, you run less of a risk of having the horse bolt out away from you. The closer you are to the horse, the easier it is to get enough force to bring his head back into you.
I’ll do this over and over again in both directions with the beginner horse, always practicing that stop and hip disengagement when I change directions. I also reward the horse a lot when I stop him. For the young horse, be sure to keep these exercises short and give lots of praise! Twenty minutes of success is much greater than an hour of frustration and trying to get it right hundreds of times. Look for small steps in progress and end on those notes. And above all, have consistency. Do these exercises on a regular basis, building upon the last one by adding a little more or refining the technique. Repetition enforces a new behavior. And above all, don’t let yourself become frustrated and angry. If your horse isn’t getting it, back up to a simpler exercise, reward, call it a day and start again another time!
Good luck and happy horse training!
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