Empathetic Horseman

I wish more people knew how to bend their horse instead of pulling on both reins and make the situation worst!! U never know when your are goanna need it so the first thing we teach everyone one is the Neutral Lateral Flexion. It came very handy today!

This is huge for J!! He is the kinda horse that wants to run around. So, I think we achieved something substantial here!! I am so proud of this guy!!🤠❤️

Just some

Every horse is different and IMO sooner u get to know ur horse, the better. Some training programs have a way to help u with that. Parelli () has the most comprehensive one though IMO. They call it the Horsenality. Anyways, Journey likes to sniff pretty much everything so that’s what I ask him to do in our warm up sessions and it has worked VERY WELL for us. He is what they call, “Left Brain Extravert” and that basically means, he is a dominate horse who likes to play while moving his feet or mouth for that matter!!😂 He also gets distracted very easily. He zones out if I ask him to circle around me for a long time so I pepper in the circles but add a surprise (like ooohh let’s sniff that or chew on this! Lol) every once in a while so he has to stay connected to me.
Mentor:

This was one of our best catch-me episodes! J was fairly faraway but I had a feeling he would come to me so I started asking him to catch me as soon as I got into the pasture and at one point he decided to walk a long way to come and say hi! 🤩🤩
Mentor: Judy Griffiths

Some days, J needs to run a bit before he can catch me up!! So, being a partner, I ask him to do exactly what he wanted to do! Run around!! I am being a bit naughty just like J himself!! 😜😂😂😂
P.s. I need to make it more interesting for him so he ends up walking towards me with a better attitude - i.e. forward ears as opposed to pinned!
Mentor: Judy Griffiths

These neutral lateral flexions were smooth as butter! 👌👌🤩🤩 I remember the time when I would ask J to give me his head and had to wait and wait and wait……!! Now, he bends with the slightest cue!! They felt so good that I ended my session there! LOVED IT!
For those who are not familiar with neutral lateral flexions, they are basically your emergency brakes. The idea is that you use these to ask your horse to give you their head/neck and that will cause them to cross their hind legs, which in turn will take the power out of their hind legs (i.e. their engine). These are meant to be used for when your horse gets emotional and wanna do anything undesirable such as bolting, rearing, kicking, etc. This way, you just make the undesirable thing difficult but allow them to realize it is easier to stop instead of forcing them to stop! I know some ppl say these are dangerous and will make your horse tip over and fall, etc. Well….they will if you jerk them over or if your timing is off but IMHO, these can SAVE YOUR LIFE! You may not need to ask for their neck all the way. Even a slight tilt of their head would cause them to cross their hind legs. Judy has taught me to go back and forth between the left and right neutral lateral flexions when J gets emotional and that is very effective.
ONE REIN at a time is the way to go since first; riding with two reins just does not make sense unless you intentionally wanna ask your horse to rear or want them to get strong in their hind legs (when pulling stuff). Plus, if you are riding with your intention/body/legs, you just need the reins to remind them if they ignored all your cues. I think we have a communication issue if we need to yank our horse’s face/mouth/neck every time we wanna ask for something, right!
Having said all of this, there is no judgment here so pls do leave a comment or DM me if u think otherwise.
Mentor: Judy Griffiths







****ckriding ****ck