Sophie's Blog

Guest

Hey, guys!

Welcome to my blog! I decided to start this because I've received a lot of questions from people about their horses and things they want some advice on. You guys can submit your questions to me on Facebook, Twitter, or Snapchat. I've pinned the links on the right hand side of the page. If you don't have any of those, commenting right here works too! It doesn't have to be all about horses though. Haha Very Happy

Please keep in mind that I'm not a professional trainer. I'm just a girl who loves horses and wants to share the beauty and majesty of these animals with everyone. Besides answering questions in this blog, I'll be sharing some of my methods and techniques. I might even include a video or two of me and Phoenix. Who knows? Haha Most of what I have to say comes from personal experience, so if you're looking for something else, you might not find it here.

That's all for this post. Looking forward to interacting more with you guys! Very Happy

~sophie

Guest

The Language of Horses and Trust

Hey, guys!

This week I'll be covering the most basic method of earning a horse's trust and communicating in it's language in a process called Join-up. This is actually not invented by me but something I learned both online and observing horses in their natural habitat. It imitates their behavior so they understand what you want and you get to form a bond with them so they trust you.

Take your horse to the middle of the round pen and remove the lead line so nothing connects you and the horse. Holding the line in your hands, drive the horse around. You can swing or throw the lead behind him to get him going but it shouldn't touch him at all. The important thing is to keep an aggressive stance - look him in the eye and keep your shoulders square to his. This is the behaviour is usually shown by the leader of the herd to separate a horse from the rest.

Keep this up for about six laps of the pen. It depends on how stubborn your horse is. There's a science behind the number of laps in relation to the flight response of the horse and how long they run in the wild. After about six or so laps, raise your arms and abruptly step in the horse's way to chase it in the other direction.

Through all of this, keep a close eye on the horse's ears and mouth. Look for his inner ear turned towards you. That means he's taking you seriously and paying attention to you. Next, his pace should reduce from a gallop or canter to a steady trot. Keep him going. At this point I sometimes switch the horse back to his original direction.

The final sign is when the horse starts licking his lips, chewing the air, and lowering his head towards the ground. This is him asking for acceptance. He no longer wants to run away from you, he wants to follow you. Drop your aggressive stance, relax your shoulders and drop your gaze. Don't look him in the eye or stare at him - only predators do that. Turn your body away from him.

This is the part that differs depending on the horse and you'll have to trust your instincts. Some horses will walk right up to you with your back turned. This shows that he acknowledges you as his leader and you have his trust. For other horses, you might have to take a couple of steps toward him when he's not looking. Stop when he turns his head to you, then walk a few steps away. Always keep your movements slow and non-threatening. Once he joins-up with you, give him a good rub to reward him then walk around the pen, changing directions here and there. The horse will follow you everywhere without a lead, just as he would follow a herd leader in the wild.

The good thing about join up is that there is no violence involved. Instead you are speaking to the horse in a language he understands. No beating is required to get the horse to submit to you. All you have to do is act like how a herd leader would. This gives the choice to the horse. He gets to decide if he wants to flee - keep running away from you - or join-up, trust you as his leader. Some horses will take longer and more sessions to join-up than others. It's a very individual thing that changes from horse to horse.

That's all for this post. As always if you guys want clarification or have any other questions, feel free to drop me a message. See you guys soon!

~sophie

Guest

"hi sophie. can i ask how you train phoenix to jump?"

~nat21

Hi, Nat!

Phoenix started out loving jumping. It's how he escaped from his old owner. I always say that Phoenix was born to jump. It's always important that the horse loves doing what they do. If not, it becomes a chore for them and then they start acting up - refusing fences, half-heartedly jumping, or bucking.

I started him on the ground with the jumping poles laid out according to his stride at the side of a round pen. You're gonna need to know your horse's stride. Let him have a good look at the poles, then lunge him around the pen. He should trot over without a problem. After a couple rounds when he's nice and relaxed, you can mount him and trot him round again.

Then set up the jumping frame and lay the poles across, still on the ground. You can try doing two or three in a row. What I do, is lay two poles on the ground close enough that he has to jump both but not to far that he can just easily walk over them one by one.

Be sure to leave ample space betweent the jumps. Slowly raise the height of the jumps once your horse is comfortable with it. Keep in mind that all this was to get him used to the sight of the jumps and not actually training him to jump, since he was already quite the jumper.

When Phoenix saw the jumps, he actually reared and threw me off his back. He was terrified of them and understandably so. What I did then was join-up with him (you can read about that in my previous post). I had already set up some low jumps before hand. After join-up, I went to the jumps and jumped over them, Phoenix follwing without a lead rope or anything tying him to me.

That's the power of join-up. Very Happy

You might also want to get lesson for show jumping so you'll know the proper form when you jump so as not to hurt him when he takes off or lands.

Thank you for your question, Nat. I hope my post answered it. Keep sending in your questions through Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat. I'd love to talk wit you guys. Bye for now Very Happy

~sophie

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