Horse Training For The Trail
Lots of people seem to be training their trail horses to go plowing mindlessly thru all sorts of obstacles instead of encouraging the horse to show some of his natural good sense in staying away from those things which might prove harmful to him. Who wants a horse that will dive into water without first trying to find out how deep it is? One show I went to had an obstacle consisting of a narrow aisle of poles, between which they placed several cardboard dress boxes! I never found out whether the horse was supposed to step on or over the boxes. Some stepped over, as mine did-which made sense I thought-and some stepped on them without batting an eyelash.
As for the idea of changing hands on the reins for the gate obstacle, I feel this should not be considered a fault. When you go out on a real trail ride, do you always know which way a gate is going to open? No! And if you come to one that opens the “wrong” way for the hand you are using, what do you do? You change hands and use the one most convenient.
Leaving the beaten path can be one of the great pleasures of riding in the saddle. I would like to suggest that common sense and preparation should guide us in developing these training programs.
Here’s hoping that a specific set of rules will be set up to eliminate the uncertainty and inefficiency of trail riding classes so that there will be trail classes that really do present obstacles that truly simulate the hazards found on a trail.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 4:37 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.